A Crown of Lights

38 The Real Thing

MERRILY FLASHED HER headlights twice and then pulled out to the end of the car park and waited for the young woman to come over.

‘Funny how things turns out, ennit?’ Gomer said mildly, from the back seat.

‘You think this is a terrible mistake?’

‘Bit late to worry ’bout that, vicar.’

The blonde came warily out of the short alley leading to the Black Lion’s yard, and got into the Volvo. Merrily eased the car into the main street, glancing into her wing mirror; nobody was following them.

‘Just put my mind at rest,’ Betty Thorogood said. ‘You’re really not from the media, are you?’

‘I’m really not.’ Merrily felt deeply uneasy about this now but, at the same time, curiously elated. She drove carefully along the village street, past all the little candles glowing brightly. ‘Actually, Betty, it’s much worse than that.’

She was getting uncomfortable, anyway, driving with the scarf on.

Jane had called Eirion back. ‘I’m getting obsessed about this. The more you think about it, the more things occur to you.’

‘Then stop thinking about it. Go to bed.’

‘I’d just lie awake, getting spooked. I keep thinking how keen they were to get Mum on that programme, all those calls from Tania. Why would they go to all that trouble for just one person who’s not very controversial.’

‘Nice legs, nice face – tabloid television?’

‘But they told Bain about her – or somebody did – well beforehand. So they’d have plenty of time to prime Kali Three.’

‘I doubt anyone at Livenight’s even heard of Kali: the Web site or the goddess. When you’re putting a programme together you must make all kinds of deals to get people to come on. I don’t really think we’re looking at any kind of big conspiracy – it’s just the way things turned out. However...’

‘What?’

‘Just I hit on another site. It’s called Witchfinder. It’s for people who want to contact a coven. Wherever you are in Britain, it’ll put you in touch with your nearest group: e-mail addresses mainly.’

‘Any around here?’

‘Loads... well, two. But that’s not the point. From Witchfinder, I clicked on another site, which was a kind of pagan Who’s Who?’

‘The Which Witch guide?’

‘Very good, for somebody with brain damage.’

‘It’s because of the brain damage. Normally I’m serious and pedantic.’

‘I got it to search for Ned Bain. Turned up a surprising amount. I assume it’s true, but anybody can put anything on the Net.’

‘Unflattering stuff?’

‘Not particularly. Biographical stuff, mainly. He’s a writer and publisher, now in charge of Dolmen Books, the New Age imprint at Harvey-Calder. Been married twice, high priest of top people’s coven in Chelsea. A champagne pagan, that’s what he gets called.’

‘Sham-pagan?’

‘I wouldn’t say that, since he’s been into it a long time – since he was at university and possibly before. But what’s really significant is that we suddenly have an explanation of why he hates the Church so much.’

‘He never said that,’ Jane said crossly. ‘He insisted his lot were an alternative to Christianity. He didn’t say anything about—’

‘Well, it’s pretty obvious, when you read about his background. His father was an academic – a professor of English literature at Oxford, and also a fairly acclaimed poet, though I’ve never heard of him. Edward Bainbridge?’

‘Bainbridge?’

‘That’s also Ned’s real name. His father died back in the mid-seventies. He was... I wish you could see this stuff. I don’t want you to think I’m jumping to the wrong conclusions.’

‘Just tell me.’

‘It’s just that his father was stabbed to death.’

Jane gripped the phone. ‘Ned Bain’s father was murdered?’

‘It’s complicated.’

‘Spill it. No, hang on a sec.’ She pulled the phone from her ear. Sound of a car in the drive. ‘Mum’s here. I’ll call you back – if not tonight, first thing tomorrow.’

‘I’ll go back online,’ Eirion said. ‘See what else I can discover before midnight.’

‘Anorak.’

‘Don’t lie there getting spooked, Jane. Think of me, think of my strong body.’

‘In your dreams, Welshman.’

The headlights exposed Ethel trickling across the lawn – a black cat, witch-friendly, crossing the beam of the sensor which then activated the lantern on the porch, spraying light up the 400-year-old black and white facade of Ledwardine vicarage.

Merrily switched off the engine. How would Nicholas Ellis react if he could see her giving sanctuary to the spawn of Satan, a child of the dragon, a worshipper of profane, heathen deities... filth, scum, spiritual vermin. How, come to that, would the bishop react? The pagans’ll have you down as a jackboot fascist, while Ellis is calling you a pinko hippy doing the tango with Satan.

The elation was long over. Merrily’s head was choked with contradictions. The twenty-five-minute journey through deserted country lanes had been, at best, awkward, their conversation sparse and stilted. It was evident that there was far more wrong in the life of Betty Thorogood than Nicholas Ellis and the Daily Mail, but very little had come out. What was she supposed to say to this woman: ‘Trust me, I’m a priest’?

Gomer, sensing the tension, opened his side door. ‘How ’bout you gives me your key, vicar? I could put the ole kettle on, and explain a few things to young Jane first, if she’s still up.’

‘Brilliant.’ Gomer could be uncannily perceptive.

They watched him let himself into the vicarage. When he opened the door, a light came on in the hall.

‘I promise I won’t be sick as I walk in,’ Betty Thorogood said drily.

Merrily leaned her head on the back of her seat. ‘Is it that obvious?’

‘I can tell you’re having second thoughts.’

‘Being psychic.’

‘I’m not psychic that way.’

At the first sight of the dog collar, Betty Thorogood had not screamed or hurled herself at the passenger door. This was not a Hammer film. This was not Livenight.

‘I’m sorry,’ Merrily said. ‘It was a stupid remark.’

‘Aye, well. Nearly as stupid as mine about being sick.’ Something – tiredness, probably – had brought out a Northern accent. Yorkshire? ‘Look, I realize what you did was a spur-of-the-moment thing. You couldn’t have known I’d walk into that pub.’

Merrily said, ‘What actually brought you there?’

‘Couldn’t go back home.’ Mirthless laugh. ‘Place was full of witches.’

The porch light went out. Merrily could no longer see Betty’s face.

‘Also,’ Betty said tonelessly into the darkness, ‘I’d just been virtually accused of murder.’

Despite Livenight, Jane still always thought of them as dark-haired, dark-complexioned. Celtic. But this was an English rose, and a wild rose at that. She had a subdued energy about her. Or maybe that was just a subjective thing, because, thanks to Gomer, Jane knew.

Wow!

‘This is Betty,’ Mum had said casually. ‘She’s staying the night. This is my daughter, Jane. Brew some tea, flower. We’ll be down in a few minutes.’

Under normal circumstances, this would have been an ultra-cool moment, a significant chapter in the liberalization of the Anglican Church.

But the chances that the Thorogood woman was not involved with Ned Bain were pretty remote. Pagans stuck together, so clearly Mum could have invited in more than she knew.

‘We keep a room fairly ready,’ she was saying. ‘It’s not very grand, but the bedding should be aired.’

‘Anything, please,’ Betty Thorogood said.

Jane forgot about the tea, followed them upstairs. The blonde, it had to be admitted, did not look like a threat. Instead she looked done in. By now, most people who’d never been here before would be commenting on the atmosphere and the obvious antiquity of the place – the twisting black beams, the bulging walls, the tilted ceilings. This woman might have been climbing the stairwell of a concrete apartment block.

Mum said, ‘If you need a change of clothes I’m sure we can sort something out. I’m a bit on the stunted side, but Jane’s got a lot of stuff from the days when you were supposed to buy everything a couple of sizes too big.’

The self-styled witch and Mum were standing on the landing, near the second staircase leading to Jane’s apartment. ‘Bathroom’s that one.’ Mum indicated the one door that was slightly ajar. ‘It’s bleak and cold and horrible, but one day, when we get the money...’ She broke off.

From six stairs down, Jane witnessed this clearly. Betty Thorogood quivered for just an instant before tossing back her mass of hair and, almost absently, shaking out a word.

‘Apples?’

Mum froze; Jane saw her eyes grow watchful.

Mum said, ‘I’m sorry?’ As though she hadn’t heard, which of course she had.

She and Jane both had. And they knew what it meant. For a moment, the air up here seemed almost too thick to breathe.

‘I’m sorry,’ Betty said. ‘I just... you know... Sorry.’

Jane marched up four steps. ‘You had a feeling of apples?’

Mum frowned. ‘Jane...’

‘What kind of apples?’

‘I...’ Betty shook her head again, as if to clear it, her hair tumbling. ‘I suppose not apples as much as blossom. White, like soft snow.’

‘Oh, wow,’ Jane breathed.

‘I’m sorry,’ Betty said. ‘It just came out.’

Mum bit her lip.

Jane said, ‘And we thought Wil had gone...’

Mum started flinging lights on. ‘Betty, if you want to just check out your room...’

Betty Thorogood nodded and followed her.

She wasn’t getting away that easily.

‘Wil was our ghost,’ Jane called after them. ‘Wil Williams, vicar of this parish. Found dead in the orchard behind the church in sixteen seventy. Hanging from an apple tree – when the blossom was out.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Betty Thorogood said again. ‘It’s a problem I have.’

‘Wow,’ Jane said, in serious awe. Nobody knew about the apple blossom. Not even Kali Three. ‘You’re the real thing, aren’t you?’

39 Witches Don’t Cry

THE KID BROUGHT them tea at the kitchen table and then started filling the kitchen with the seductive scent of toast. It was ten-thirty. As far as Jane was concerned, Betty Thorogood had proved herself.

Merrily had stopped agonizing about this stuff. Where sensitives were concerned, seeking the cold, earthly, rational explanation could be wastefully time-consuming. Life was too short to question it too hard; it just was. It would have been less impressive in Betty’s case if she hadn’t, in other respects, appeared defeated, demoralized, broken. As though she’d looked into her own future and seen black water.

‘Is Wil still here?’ demanded Jane, galvanized – knowing nothing about the death of the elderly woman, Mrs Wilshire. ‘I mean as a spirit, not just an imprint?’

‘I don’t know,’ Betty said. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to qualify what I feel. I just get images sometimes. Fragments, incomplete messages.’

The apple blossom. Last year, when they’d first moved in, Merrily had been sensing an old distress locked into the upper storeys of the vicarage, the timeless dementia of trapped emotions. Jane, under the influence of Miss Lucy Devenish, folklorist and mystic, claimed to have actually smelled the blossom, felt it on her face like warm snow.

It was this undismissable haunting and the Church’s general disinterest which had prodded Merrily in the general direction of Deliverance. There needed to be someone around to reassure people that they weren’t necessarily losing their minds.

Jane was saying, ‘Were you like sensitive before you became a witch?’

Betty looked uncomfortable. ‘It’s why I became one. If you exclude spiritualism, Wicca’s one of the few refuges for people who are... that way. My parents are C of E, which doesn’t encourage that kind of thing.’

An apologetic glance at Merrily, who also caught a triumphant glance from Jane, little cow, before she went greedily back into the interrogation. ‘But, like, who do you actually worship?’

‘That’s probably the wrong word. We recognize the male and female principles, and they can take several forms. Most of it comes down to fertility, in the widest sense – we don’t need more people in the world, but we do need expanded consciousness.’

‘And you, like, draw down the moon?’ The kid showing off her knowledge of witch jargon. ‘Invoke the goddess into yourself?’

‘Kind of.’

Betty was reticent, solemn in the subdued light of the big, cream-walled kitchen. Maybe having a vicar in the same room was an inhibiting factor, but this woman was certainly not Livenight material. Merrily sat down at the table and listened as Betty, pressured by Jane, began explaining how she’d actually got into Wicca at teacher training college, before dropping out to work for a herbalist. How she’d saved up to go with a friend to an international pagan conference in New England, where she met the American, Robin Thorogood, making a film with some old art school friends. So Robin had found Betty first, and then Wicca, in that order. Betty’s face momentarily shone at the memory. Her green eyes were clear as rock pools: she must literally have bewitched Robin Thorogood.

The phone rang. Jane dropped the cheese grater and carried the cordless into a corner.

‘You have a disciple,’ Merrily said softly.

‘Kids only find Wicca exotic because it’s forbidden. When it becomes a regular part of religious education they’ll find it just as boring as... anything else.’

‘Don’t feel you have to talk it down on my account.’

‘Merrily’ – Betty pushed back her hair – ‘there doesn’t need to be conflict. There’s actually a lot of common ground. Spiritual people of any kind have more in common than they do with total non-believers. In the end we want the same things, most of us. Don’t we?’

‘Maybe.’

Jane said loudly, ‘No, I’m sorry, she’s not here. I was kind of expecting her back, but in her job you can’t count on anything. Sometimes she spends, like, whole nights battling with crazed demonic entities and then she comes home and sleeps for two days. It’s like she’s in a coma – really disturbing. Sure, no problem. Bye.’

‘Flower,’ Merrily said, ‘you do realize that little exercise in whimsy might be lost in the transition to cold print.’

‘In the Independent?’

Merrily nodded. ‘So just don’t say it to the Daily Star.’

She went over to switch on the answering machine. When she came back Betty was saying, ‘In Shrewsbury, we were members of a coven containing quite a few... pagan activists, I suppose you’d have to call them. Teachers, mainly. They’re good people in their way, but they’d be more use on the council. They’re looking for organized religion, for structure.’

‘These are the people who’ve moved in on your house?’ Merrily asked her.

‘Some of them. It’s what I wanted to come down here and get away from. You don’t have to work in a coven. The only structures I’m really interested in now are the ones you build for yourself. But Robin will go along with anybody, I’m afraid.’

‘Why don’t you phone him?’

‘I will. I just don’t want to speak to any of the others. We came down here to work alone. At least, I did. Robin just wanted to live somewhere inspiring and to show it off to his friends. He’d tell you we were sent here because of a series of omens. All that was irrelevant to me.’

Interesting. What was slowly becoming apparent to Merrily was that Betty had come to Old Hindwell in a state of personal spiritual crisis. She’d been drawn into witchcraft by the need to understand the psychic experiences she’d been having from an early age. But maybe paganism hadn’t come up with the answers she’d sought.

‘Omens?’ Merrily brought out her cigarettes. To Jane’s evident disgust, Betty accepted one.

‘Estate agent particulars arriving out of the blue, that kind of thing. When Robin saw the church, he was hooked. Just like Major Wilshire.’

‘Tell me about Mrs Wilshire again,’ Merrily said.

The police had questioned Betty for almost an hour at Mrs Wilshire’s bungalow. A detective constable had arrived who probably had never had a suspicious death to himself before.

‘I’d no idea she suffered angina,’ Betty had told them. ‘I just concocted something harmless for her arthritis.’

No, she could not imagine why Mrs Wilshire would stop taking the Trinitrin tablets prescribed for her angina, a full, unopened bottle of which had been discovered by Dr Banks-Morgan. No, she would never in a million years have advised Mrs Wilshire to stop taking them. She had only suggested a possible winding-down of the steroids if and when the herbal remedy had any appreciable effects on the arthritis.

‘She told me Dr Coll knew all about me, and he was very much in favour of complementary medicines for some complaints.’

‘You know that’s not true, Mrs Thorogood,’ the CID man had said. ‘Dr Banks-Morgan says he has no respect at all for alternative medicines and he makes this clear to all his patients.’

It got worse. If Mrs Wilshire was not becoming unduly influenced by Mrs Thorogood and her witch-remedies, why would she tell Dr Banks-Morgan he needn’t bother coming to visit her again?

Betty could not believe for one minute that Mrs Wilshire had told her caring, caring GP not to come back. But she knew which of them was going to be believed.

‘What a bastard,’ Jane said. ‘He’s trying to fit you up.’

‘Where did they leave things?’ Merrily said. ‘The police, I mean.’

‘They said they might be in touch again.’

‘They probably won’t be. There’s nothing they can prove.’

Betty said, ‘Do you believe me?’

‘Course we do,’ Jane said.

‘Merrily?’

‘From what little I know of Dr Coll, I wouldn’t trust him too far. Gomer?’

Gomer thought about it. ‘Smarmy little bugger, Dr Coll. Always persuading folk to ’ave tests and things for their own good, like, but it’s just so’s he can pick up cash from the big drug companies – that’s what Greta reckons.’

‘Then I’ll tell you the rest,’ Betty said.

And she told them about Mrs Juliet Pottinger and what she’d said about the Hindwell Trust.

‘En’t never yeard of it,’ Gomer said when she’d finished.

Merrily didn’t find that too surprising if the trust was administered by J.W. Weal.

‘Lot of incomers is retired folk,’ Gomer confirmed. ‘Like young Greg says, they comes out yere in the summer, thinks how nice it all looks and they’re amazed at how low house prices is, compared to where they comes from. So they sells up, buys a crappy ole cottage, moves out yere, gets ill...’

‘Fair game?’

‘Like poor bloody hand-reared pheasants,’ Gomer said.

Merrily asked Betty, ‘Is it your feeling Mrs Wilshire’s left money to the Hindwell Trust?’

Betty nodded.

‘This stinks,’ Merrily said.

‘Works both ways, see,’ said Gomer. ‘Patient needs their will sortin’, mabbe some poor ole biddy goin’ a bit soft in the head, and Dr Coll recommends a good lawyer, local man, trust him with your life. Big Weal turns up, you’re some little ole lady, you en’t gonner argue too much. ’Sides which, it’s easy for a lawyer to tamper with a will, ennit? Get the doctor to witness it. All local people, eh?’

Betty explained why she’d gone to see Mrs Pottinger in the first place. Talking about that particular atmosphere she’d perceived in the old church, but hesitating before finally describing the image of a stricken and desperate man in what might have been a stained cassock.

‘Wow,’ said Jane.

Merrily tried not to react too obviously, but she was becoming increasingly interested in the Reverend Terence Penney. ‘What year was this, again?’

‘Seventy-five,’ Betty said. ‘He seems to have been turning into a latent hippy.’

Gomer looked up. ‘Loads o’ hippies round yere. You could get an ole cottage, no electric, for a few ’undred, back then, see, and nobody asked no questions. More drugs in Radnor them days than you’d find the whole o’ Birmingham.’

‘But you never actually ran into Penney yourself?’ Merrily lit another cigarette.

‘No, but I been thinkin’ of Danny Thomas. That boy knew all the hippies, see. Most locals they didn’t have nothin’ to do with ’em, but Danny, ’e was right in there. Up in court for growin’ cannabis, the whole bit. You want me to get Danny on the phone?’

‘It’s a bit late,’ Merrily suggested.

‘Boy don’t keep normal farmin’ hours,’ Gomer said.

Danny Thomas had now turned down the music. In Danny’s barn there were speaker cabinets the size of wardrobes, all covered with chicken shit. Gomer also recalled an intercom on the wall. Bawling down it at Danny when he was wanted on the phone was how most folk reckoned Greta’s voice had reached air-raid siren level.

It must be cold tonight out in Danny’s barn, but Danny would jump around a lot to the music before collapsing into the hay with a joint. Gomer pictured him sitting on a bale, straggly grey hair down the back of his donkey jacket, with Jimi at his feet – Mid-Wales’s only deaf sheepdog.

Gomer sat on the edge of the vicar’s desk and waited while Greta had summoned Danny back to the farmhouse.

‘What’s goin’ down, Gomer, my man? You become a private eye, is it? Every bugger I meet these days, they just been grilled by Gomer Parry.’

‘All right, listen to me, boy,’ Gomer said. ‘Give your ole drug-raddled memory a rattle on the subject of Terry Penney.’

A few seconds of quiet. Bit of a rarity around Danny unless he’d had a puff or two.

‘Poor bugger,’ he says at last.

‘Come to a sad end, what I yeard.’

‘I liked ole Terry.’

‘You go to ’is church?’

‘Din’t like him that much. But he was all right. He lent me his Dylan albums. This to do with that bugger Ellis? Tricky bastard, he is. Blew poor ole Gret’s mind. Gets ’em all in a bloody trance.’

‘Why’d he do it, Danny? Why’d Penney fill up the ole brook with good pews?’

‘Dope, ennit?’

‘Ar, well, that’s what they all says. Don’t mean bugger all.’

Danny went quiet again.

‘What you know about Penney, Danny? What you know about Penney you en’t sayin’?’

‘Long while back, Gomer. Terry’s dead. Let the poor bugger lie.’

‘Can’t.’

‘It’s that vicar o’ yours, ennit? Diggin’ the dirt.’

‘We needs to know, boy.’

‘Gimme a day or so to think about it.’

‘Can’t. C’mon, Danny, who’s it gonner harm?’

‘Me.’ Danny’s voice went thin. ‘I’m as guilty as any bugger, Gomer. It was me got Terry into it. Well... me and Coll.’

‘Dr Coll?’

‘Me and Dr Coll,’ Danny says. ‘And the bloody era that promised us the earth. And here we all are nigh on forty year later and further in the shit.’

‘Stay there,’ Gomer said. ‘Don’t move.’

When Betty Thorogood started to cry, it turned everything around.

Until now, talking about a world she knew, she’d been cool and assured. The otherworldly – visions and gods and archetypes – did not scare her, any more than neuroses scared a psychologist. In the everyday world, implicated in the death of a harmless widow, Betty came apart.

‘I just wanted to help her. I was sorry for her... that’s all there was to it.’

Jane had moved her chair back, appalled. Witches don’t cry! Merrily leaned across the table, put a hand over Betty’s.

Betty parted her hair, peered at Merrily through her tears. ‘What if their tests show up something nasty in that potion I gave her? Something I didn’t put there.’

‘What are they going to find? Henbane? Deadly night-shade? Rat poison? He doesn’t need all that. He’s got natural causes, apparently hastened by her overreliance on you.’

‘I just don’t understand why she would stop taking the pills he’d prescribed. She thought he was wonderful. She thought...’ Betty’s eyes filled up again. ‘She thought everyone was wonderful. Everyone who tried to help her. The local people were so good. Because she was from Off, anyone local who didn’t actually spit on her front step seemed wonderful and caring. I was so sorry for her. And dying there, in her chair, in front of that lukewarm fire... Perhaps he is telling the truth. Perhaps poor, fuddled Mrs Wilshire thought my little herbal remedy, bottled under the moon, was some sort of cure-all.’

‘There’s an experienced nurse I know,’ Merrily said. ‘Perhaps I’ll give her a call.’

She stopped as Gomer returned. His glasses shone like twin torch-bulbs.

‘Come and talk to Danny, vicar.’

40 Key to the Kingdom

AS DANNY TALKED, the picture formed for Merrily in ragged, fluttering colours. Radnor Forest in the 1960s and 1970s: hippy paradise.

The flower children had wandered in from Off and settled in this border country in their hundreds because it was cheap and remote. They rented or even bought half-ruined cottages far from the roads. Thin boys in yellow trousers chopping wood from the hedges. Beautiful, long-haired girls in ankle-length medieval dresses fetching water from the well.

In spite of the electricity supply being at best intermittent, they brought the new music – why, The Incredible String Band even lived for a while near Llandegley towards the northwestern end of the Forest.

And the dope. The hippies also brought the dope.

The local people were amused rather than hostile – the hippies didn’t do any damage and they were always a talking point.

And for some – like Danny Thomas, dreamy, faraway farmer’s boy – this was what they’d been waiting for all their lives. When it was really happening Danny was good and ready; he figured he must’ve been born a hippy – growing up on Elvis, then the Beatles, popping purple hearts to groove all night and still be awake in time to milk the cows.

Merrily smiled.

And then cannabis. Danny had acquired his first joint at a dance in Llandod, with another to smoke in the top field after sunset. He did a bit of dealing for a while, but he was never much good at that and, besides, there was a much more reliable dealer emerging in the area. Better just to grow the stuff – nice, sheltered spot, in Bryncot Dingle – and then give it away. Danny was so excited by the dawning of this incredible new world that, by the summer of 1975, he was wanting to turn on the whole Forest.

‘Who was this “more reliable dealer”?’ Merrily asked. ‘Can I take a guess?’

Danny was talking freely now, his voice hoarse but liquid, like wet ash. Dr Coll had been the son of a surgeon at Hereford Hospital with a house in New Radnor. Still a medical student back then, in need of a few quid, like all your students. ‘Medical students always got their sources, ennit?’ Danny said.

‘He was a hippy, too?’

‘Lord, no. Dr Coll en’t never been a hippy, not even as a boy. Just a feller with a eye to a few quid. Course when he qualified as a doctor, that all come to an end. Gotter keep ’is nose clean. Or at least keep it lookin’ clean.’

And there would have been better ways of making money by then, Merrily thought. ‘What about Terry Penney? When did he appear?’ From what Betty had learned from Mrs Pottinger and from what Sophie had passed on to Merrily, Penney had emerged as a bright boy, but impressionable, and not too well-off. But what Danny was saying produced a different picture: Terry was an upper-middle-class radical with a posh, wealthy girlfriend who everyone thought was his wife, until she found life in Radnor seriously lacking and went back to the Smoke, leaving the vicar of Old Hindwell to grow his hair and smoke dope with the likes of Danny Thomas.

Terry, like Danny, was finding the times life-enhancing and life-changing. But Terry also saw it from a religious perspective: drugs opening the doors of perception, the gates of the soul. Terry was a fan of the seventeenth-century poet, Thomas Traherne, who had found secrets of the universe in Herefordshire meadows.

The dope had certainly elevated and coloured Terry’s faith in God. Today, perhaps he’d be all happy-clappy and singing-in-tongues, like Ellis, and perhaps the drugs would have represented a passing phase. But it was a never-ending inner journey, then. Terry and Danny would smoke dope, untroubled by the law and Danny discovered that he loved the whole world and Terry loved the world and God. Terry believed that the time was coming when all mankind would be herbally awakened to the splendour of the Lord.

Then Dr Coll brought the acid along.

Merrily nodded. Acid had been something different. Not just another drug, but the key to serious religious experience, a direct line to God. To Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, all those guys, LSD was the light on the road to Damascus, and anyone could get there.

So, one fine, warm day, Terry Penney and Danny Thomas and Dr Coll had found a shady corner of a Radnor Valley field, overlooking the Four Stones. They had their lumps of sugar and Dr Coll brought out the lysergic acid. An experiment, he said. He wouldn’t take any himself; he’d supervise, make sure they came to no harm.

Danny’s trip lasted for ever. Under the perfumed, satin sky, he went through whole lifetimes in one afternoon. He found that the Radnor Valley was in his blood... really in his blood – the whole landscape turning to liquid and jetting through his veins. When he looked at the inside of his wrist he could see through the skin and into that fast-flowing land. He was the land, he was the valley, he was the forest. He walked through the silken grass down to the Four Stones, which he now understood to hold the mind of the valley, and Dr Coll said afterwards he had to stop Danny beating his head on the prehistoric stones to get inside them because the stones knew the secret.

The Reverend Penney, meanwhile, came to believe he’d been granted access to the very kingdom of heaven.

He saw an angel, a giant angel with his feet astride the valley. Merrily imagined a great William Blake angel with the red sun in his wings and a raised sword which cleaved the hills.

Life was never going to be the same again for either Terry or Danny. Danny was still tripping when he got home to the farm and he walked down the yard and saw the depth of sorrow in the eyes of the beautiful pigs and realized how much he loved those pigs. To this day, Danny Thomas said, he wouldn’t see a pig ever killed.

He and Terry took four more trips together. Terry told Danny that he knew now that he had seen the Archangel Michael, who had been appointed to guard the forest and the Radnor Valley, because this was a great doorway through which you could enter the kingdom. Terry found a book by the Reverend Parry-Jones who’d been vicar at Llanfihangel Rhydithon back in the twenties and he too thought the Forest was special, but he also mentioned a dragon that you could hear breathing in the night, and Terry said this was no surprise because places of great spiritual power were equally attractive to devilish forces.

Terry considered it no accident that he had been brought here, now, at this time of spiritual awakening, to be the priest of one of St Michael’s churches. He had told Danny he was going to call a meeting of all the other St Michael clergy around the Forest because they were destined to work together. But this never happened, because the other ministers had all heard about Terry Penney.

Still Terry insisted he was being groomed by God for the Big Task. Every day, before dawn, he’d kneel before his altar in Old Hindwell Church and beg God and St Michael that his mission might be revealed to him.

But God held out on him.

Terry decided he was not yet worthy, did not yet know enough, was not yet pure enough. He stopped smoking cannabis and concentrated on reading the Book of Revelation a hundred times. He wrote out important verses from it on sheets of white card and hung them around his room at the old rectory. His sermons became impenetrably apocalyptic. He began to research St Michael and the lives of those saints and mystics who had become obsessed by the warrior archangel. He made solemn pilgrimages to all the St Michael churches around Radnor Forest... approaching each from the direction of the last, walking the final mile barefoot after a day’s fasting.

‘Local people was startin’ to go off him in a big way,’ Danny said. ‘Local people don’t like it when their vicar gets talked about in other parishes.’

Terry Penney had walked barefoot across the bridge to the church of St Michael, Cefnllys – an awesome setting, where an entire medieval town had been laid out under its castle. Then Terry had hiked unshod across the bleak Penybont Common to Llanfihangel Rhydithon. Next, he’d come down from the Forest to the yews encircling the rebuilt roadside church at Llanfihangel nant Melan. And finally he’d tramped on callused feet along the sombre, narrow road to Cascob, where he’d stood before the old Abracadabra charm.

It was three weeks after this that Terry had that visit from Councillor Prosser, wondering why he hadn’t applied for a grant towards the upkeep of the old building.

Two weeks later, Terry trashed the church.

What had happened, Danny said, was that one night Terry came to the conclusion that God wanted him to go alone into St Michael’s, Old Hindwell, and open himself to revelation.

In fact, drop some acid.

Danny had obtained the LSD for Terry from Dr Coll. The price had gone up by then, acid being in demand, but Terry didn’t care. In fact, the idea of the priest taking a trip in his own parish church bothered Danny more than Terry.

‘For starters, he wouldn’t ’ave nobody with him. Dr Coll was back home at the time, but Terry wouldn’t ’ave him to supervise – nor me. Had to be just him an’ God, see. Terry reckoned nothin’ bad was gonner happen to him in the house of God. But me, I wouldn’t’ve gone in there alone at night in a million year, with or without drugs – creepy ole place like that.’

‘Bad trip?’

‘Had a bad one meself, few months later,’ Danny said. ‘Kept gettin’ flashbacks for bloody weeks. Scared the shit out o’ me. Anyway, the next time I seen Terry, the boy was a mess. Hadn’t shaved, din’t smell too good. Smelt of fear, you know?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know what ’appened to Terry Penney that night. I just sits in yere, hammering buggery out o’ the ole Les Paul and I remembers the good times.’

‘You must have asked him about it?’

‘Terry din’t wanner talk about it at all, vicar. Kept ’isself to ’isself. And then they finds bits o’ church floatin’ down the brook, and Terry’s gone. I used to wonder whether the boy seen the carvings on the wood screen come alive, or whether he seen... I dunno...’

‘The dragon?’ Merrily said.

‘He seen St Michael out in that field. Mabbe ’e seen the dragon in ’is own church?’

Merrily recalled the William Blake print in Nick Ellis’s war room. The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun – relating to an image from Revelation about the dragon waiting for the woman to give birth so that it could devour the child. The dragon was said to have seven heads and ten horns. It was not a nice dragon, and Blake’s painting throbbed with a transcendent evil.

‘I don’t know how much of this Ellis knows,’ Merrily said, telling them as they sat around the kitchen table, ‘but it would account for a lot. If he believes Penney had a black vision of the dragon inside that church – Satan rising, or in his view paganism rising – and if we believe what he told me about being the subject of some kind of hate campaign, forecasting a return of the dragon...’

Poison-pen letters for months. And phone calls – cackling voices in the night. Recently had a jagged scratch removed from my car bonnet. Series of chevrons... like a dragon’s back.

‘... then, to him, Betty, you and Robin are the embodiment of something that already exists in those ruins on a metaphysical level.’

‘It’s not true, though,’ Betty said. ‘We didn’t know anything about Penney. We didn’t even know for certain that the church had been built on an ancient site until we’d bought it.’

‘How do you know that now?’

‘Well, after we learned about all the prehistoric archaeology in the area, it seemed like it was on the cards. Also – this probably won’t cut much ice with you – a friend of ours went round with a dowsing rod and pendulum.’

‘Jane, do we have an Ordnance Survey map handy?’

‘Brilliant!’ Jane leapt up.

Mr Penney came out with what was described to me as a lot of nonsensical gobbledegook relating to the layout of churches around Radnor Forest.

Betty said that Robin had tried to work out a pattern on the map, but they had been aware of only three St Michael churches at the time.

‘OK.’ Jane had returned with the map, spread it out on the table. ‘You’ll have to help me out here, Gomer. Where’s Cascob?’

Gomer found it after a bit of peering. He also found St Michael’s, Cefnllys, then Llanfihangel Rhydithon and Llanfihangel nant Melan. Jane encircled them – along with Old Hindwell (ruins of).

‘Five now.’ Jane drew a ring round the last one. ‘And they do go right around the Forest.’

Betty was silently contemplating the map. ‘It’s too big, this,’ she said at last. You wouldn’t have anything smaller scale?’

‘Only a road map.’ Jane bounced up again. ‘I’ll get it.’

‘And some paper?’ Betty said.

Neither Cascob nor Cefnllys was marked on the road map, but she put circles on the approximate spots, and pushed the map and the paper and a pencil towards Betty.

Betty copied the pattern onto the paper. ‘It’s not perfect, but it’s there.’

‘It’s a five-pointed star,’ Merrily said. ‘A pentagram.’ She looked at Betty. ‘Can you explain?’

Betty swallowed. ‘Could I have another cigarette?’

Merrily lit it for her. Betty was now looking uncertain, perhaps worried.

‘If these churches were built to form not a circle but a five-pointed star, that would represent a defensive thing, OK? The pentagram’s a powerful protective symbol. It’s used in banishing rituals. Like if you’re faced with... an evil entity... and you draw a big pentagram in the air, it ought to go away. So the medieval Christians might have wanted to enclose Radnor Forest in a giant pentagram of St Michael churches for the purpose of containing the dragon. Or whatever the dragon represented for them.’

‘It’s hardly a perfect pentagram,’ Merrily pointed out. ‘It could be purely coincidental.’

But then, she thought, in Ellis’s ministry, nothing is coincidental.

‘There’s another connection here,’ Betty said, ‘with Cascob. The word “abracadabra” is used in a charm – an exorcism – which was found buried in the churchyard. The word “abracadabra” has become devalued because of all those stage conjurors using it, but it’s actually very, very old and very powerful, and it’s believed to represent the pentagram because it contains the letter “A” five times. And if you put the “A”s together...’ Betty pulled Jane’s pencil and paper across and drew:

‘Cool,’ Jane said.

‘Actually, it’s not,’ Betty said soberly. ‘The defensive, white magic pentagram has the point at the top. What you’ve just found on the map is an inverted pentagram.’ She put down the pencil and looked at Merrily. ‘I don’t think I need to explain what that means.’

‘No.’ Merrily pulled out a cigarette. ‘Probably not.’

Jane looked mystified. ‘You mean it’s like an aggressive thing?’

Betty said, ‘It tended to be used in black magic. See the horns? Even pagans accept that horns are not invariably a good sign. Look... I went to Cascob the other day. That exorcism’s displayed on the wall, in a frame. It dates back to about seventeen hundred, and was used to purge a woman called Elizabeth Loyd of evil spirits and alleged assaults of the Devil. I... got a bad feeling from it.’

‘In what way?’

Betty looked embarrassed.

‘You mean the exorcism itself?’

‘I don’t know. My first thought was that Elizabeth Loyd was just some poor epileptic or schizophrenic girl who somebody decided must be possessed. Then I... got the feeling that maybe she did have something... satanic... inside her. I don’t know. The wording was a mixture of Roman Catholic and pagan and cabbalistic references.’

‘Oh?’

‘A combination of religion and magic, therefore. I suppose what really scared me was that the words were so very similar to the ones used in a charm that was found in a box concealed in an old fireplace at our house. And that one was dated over a century later. Nothing had changed.’

Nothing had changed.

Nothing changes. Merrily tried to focus. There was something very important here.

‘You found this charm?’

‘No, it was delivered to us. The box was placed on our doorstep just after we moved in. It spooked us quite a bit, because it was a charm against witchcraft. It seemed to be saying, “We know what you are and we know how to deal with you.” There was a note with it, signed “The Local People”.’

‘Nasty,’ Jane murmured.

‘The wording of this exorcism,’ Merrily said, ‘do you remember how it went?’

‘It invoked God and the Trinity. It said it would deliver Elizabeth Loyd from all witchcraft and spirits and hardness of heart. It had Roman Catholic stuff, kind of Ave Maria, and it used these cabbalistic names of power – Tetragrammaton, the mighty name of God.’

‘Did it really?’

‘That means something?’

‘I don’t know. OK, something else... Cascob. Apparently, Penney approached the then vicar or rector of Cascob and suggested he get his church decommissioned. He talked about the St Michael churches around Radnor Forest. The vicar reminded him of a folk tale implying that if one of those churches were destroyed it would allow the dragon to escape.’

‘Right.’

‘Penney said it was... quite the reverse.’

‘Wow,’ Jane said, ‘like the reverse pentagram. I don’t get it.’

‘Nor me.’ Merrily stared at the irregular star of churches. ‘Whether the churches were intended to be a circle and just happened to fall into this rather vague star shape... or whether it’s all complete coincidence. And, when you think about it, if you turn the map upside down, it’s not inverted any more, is it?’

‘Wrong!’ Jane cried. ‘Because pagans always work to the north, right, Betty? Their altars are north-facing. The two prongs, the horns, are pointing north.’

Merrily nodded, with reluctance. ‘Yeah, OK. I think it’s at least fair to say that Penney became convinced this was bad news. If his LSD experience – and, in those days, the feeling was that this wasn’t just another drug – if his experience convinced him that the unfortunate layout of the churches invited the old serpent to slither in... then that would explain why he was so determined to destroy the pattern by taking out one of the churches.’

‘I wonder how much of this Ellis knows?’ Betty said.

Possibly quite a lot, Merrily thought. She was considering the distinctly medieval aspects of Ellis’s unnecessary exorcism of Marianne Starkey.

She dreamed, through most of that night it seemed, in colour.

Deep velvet purples and wild, slashing yellows. Abstract images, and then the church at Old Hindwell, vibrating blue against a pink evening sky. White-clad Ellis and his followers walking like pilgrims through the woods with their Bibles and bottles of holy water to exorcize the pagan place by night. Betty, in a robe of pale mauve.

Jesus Christ screaming on the cross.

Fire sizzling. Yellow fire in the kindling. The robe shrivelled and blackened. Betty’s golden hair alight.

At the foot of the cross, Marianne Starkey in a torn white nightdress, blood-flecked.

Out of a dream full of savage heat, Merrily awoke into the cold. The sizzling became the metallic rattle of night hail on the bedroom window. Merrily wrapped herself in the too-thin duvet and prayed for the blue and the gold, but they wouldn’t come.

41 The Kindling in the Forest

IT WAS DAWN.

Max led Robin out, through his own house, through the mingled aromas of incense and marijuana, out through the kitchen, past the Rayburn on which sat the remains of a pot of fragrant stew tended last night by Alexandra, past sleeping people in sleeping bags.

Robin, as if sleepwalking, his mind disconnected.

He followed Max across the cold yard, in between the oily pools, past the barn, five cars as well as the Winnebagos parked in front of it now, including the Subaru Justy. There was an intermittent sleet.

‘I thought it was meant to be cold and sharp and fine.’

‘Give it time,’ said Max.

In fact, the sky was not so dark: there was a curdled-milk moon under thin cloud and a pale, muddy glow in the east. It was February, and the blackest night of Celtic winter was supposed to be over.

The fuck it was over. Robin stared, for the first time with resentment, at the church: big and bare. The tower was lamp black. The sky in the north and west was burnt umber.

Robin had spent the night in his studio, but had hardly slept. He hadn’t shaved for two days. He didn’t want to be here any more, not without Betty. Without Betty there could be no light.

A short while ago, he’d been aroused from a miserable doze by a tapping on the door, and there was big, beardy, flutey-voiced Max, and he said, ‘Oh, Robin, I’m sorry to disturb you so early, but we have to discuss tonight.’

‘Max, how many ways can I say this? If there was no tonight, I would not be awfully gutted.’

Max was nodding solemnly, the asshole. ‘I understand. I do understand, Robin. I would give anything to have Betty back, but if she has a problem with all this, it’s perhaps as well she stays away, and she probably knows that.’

‘Oh, that’s what you think, is it?’

Betty had to be someplace close. She couldn’t have gone far, unless she’d called for a cab. And then where? Back to Shrewsbury? Back to her parents in Yorkshire, who’d barely spoken to her since she gave up her career for the Craft? Maybe she was staying with the widow Wilshire.

He’d thought she would at least’ve phoned. He’d had the phone and the answering machine in his studio all night, but all he heard were good wishes from supporters he didn’t know, threats from enemies he didn’t know, offers from media people – even one call from some private TV production company suggesting the Thorogoods might like to discuss the possibility of a docusoap series about the day-to-day lives of witches. What did these guys think their average day was like, for Chrissakes – they had breakfast in their ceremonial robes, went down to the shops hand in hand, skyclad, then sang ‘The Witches’ Rune’ together in the tub before having tantric sex in front of an open fire?

Max was bleating on, ‘... would have been a problem with numbers but, as usually happens when something is meant, it’s been solved.’

‘Solved?’ Robin said vaguely.

‘I want you to come and meet someone.’

A Tilley lamp stood on one of the old tombstones in what had been the chancel, about where the Christian altar was originally located. Presumably the Reverend Penney had hurled the altar in the creek with the rest of the stuff – or had he baulked at that?

When Max and Robin walked into the nave, George Webster was saying to someone, ‘Yeah, I see your point. The problem is, this whole building, being Christian, is oriented on the east. We can either go with that or we can just pretend the building isn’t here at all and work with the site geophysically. You know what I mean?’

‘So which do you think, George?’ A man’s voice, smooth. ‘You’re the geomancer.’

‘I think there’s got to be a compromise somewhere.’

‘No,’ the man said firmly. ‘Oh no, no compromise. We either use their altar and change the current, or we build our own to the north and work, as you say, with the site.’

‘Ah... Ned.’ Max sounded like a hesitant owl. ‘I’ve brought Robin Thorogood.’

Ned Bain, pagan publisher, king-witch in all but title, came out into the lamplight. Robin had never seen him before. His face looked white in the gaseous Tilley light, but it was strong and lean and kind of genial. His hair was tight and curly. He had on a dark suit with a dark shirt underneath, kind of priesty – like church priesty.

‘Hi.’ He gripped Robin’s arm.

‘Hello.’

‘I do like your name. It evokes Robin Goodfellow, the hobgoblin. Is it your given name?’

‘Sure.’

‘Someone’s prescience? And I very much like your work.’

‘Well, uh... thanks.’ Despite the temperature, Robin’s arm felt warm all the way to the shoulder, even after Bain let it go.

‘This place inspires you?’

‘I guess.’

‘It should do. It’s an important site. It’s an axis.’ Bain’s voice was one peg down from smooth and refined, maybe a tad camp, but not enough to deter the ladies, Robin guessed. He felt faintly uncomfortable about the heat in his arm.

‘Listen, Robin, I’m grateful for what you’re doing. I know this has got to be a strain. I mean physically, psychically, domestically.’

‘Uh... yeah, domestically, sure.’

‘But I can’t tell you how important it is, mate.’ Bain was standing on the tombstone next to the lamp, casual, on someone’s grave. His eyes found Robin’s. Couldn’t see those eyes but they’d found him and they held him. ‘This is our religion. We are the religion of the British Isles. All these church sites are our sites.’

‘Right. Uh, I’ve been kind of out of it... You just drive over here or were you here last night?’

‘No, I was in a hotel last night. I think you were already crowded enough, weren’t you? I drove over this morning. I wanted to watch the sun rise here. And to see the place in the dark. I’m sorry, I should’ve asked your permission.’

‘Uh, no, that’s...’

Max said, ‘The point is, we have to get this right. Old Hindwell’s a crucial test case, and if we’re seen to back down before this man Ellis, it’ll set the Craft back years... decades, even.’

Robin glanced at George. George was looking up over the walls of the nave towards the moon. Robin guessed George had told Ned Bain all about Betty walking out and Robin coming to pieces. He’d been set up for a pep talk. Trouble was, it was working. Bain had magnetism, even in the dark – maybe especially in the dark. Also he had a certain instant gravitas: when Max talked, you thought bullshit; but if Ned laid something on you, you were inclined to accept its importance.

‘You’ve done Imbolc before, of course, Robin?’

‘Sure.’

‘It is very appropriate.’ Ned picked up the Tilley lamp by its wire handle. He looked like a modern, clean-shaven Christ out of Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World. ‘It’s the first fire festival of the year. The kindling in the forest of winter.’

‘Like, the winter of Christianity?’

‘Well perceived,’ Bain said very softly. Robin felt stupidly flattered. ‘It is the winter of Christianity.’

‘And Ned’s devised a rite reflecting that,’ George said.

‘Didn’t take many modifications. Which shows how essentially right it is.’ Ned Bain raised the lamp so that there was a core of light in the centre of what had been the chancel. ‘For instance, when we chant, “Thus we banish winter, thus we welcome spring”, we’ll be banishing rather more than winter. Or, in this case, a spiritual winter which has lasted two thousand years. And we’ll be welcoming, into this temple, a new light stronger than any one spring.’

‘Right,’ Robin said.

The lamp sputtered. Around Ned, as he lowered it, shadows grouped and divided again.

‘What I’m saying, Robin, is that for the duration of our rite, Old Hindwell will be the centre of... everything.’

Robin was awed, no longer reluctantly.

George said, ‘She’ll be sorry she missed out on this.’

‘Betty?’

‘Yeah. Can’t you get her back, man? She’s the priestess for this. She’s got more’ – George opened his hands like he was letting out a cloud of smoke – ‘than any of us.’

‘I was very much looking forward to meeting her,’ Ned Bain said. ‘Word gets around.’

‘Well, uh...’ Robin looked down into the dark around his feet. ‘I guess the pressure got too much, is all. Things haven’t been going so very right for either of us.’

‘Yes. I heard about Blackmore.’

Robin looked up.

‘He’s an awkward sod.’ Ned shrugged. ‘But personally... you know... I liked that design.’

‘You did?’

‘A lot. I mean... Well, I still think Kirk could be persuaded to listen to reason.’

For Robin, the volatile light seemed to leap up the walls. ‘Even at this stage?’

‘The central motif’s there, isn’t it?’

‘Well, sure, I... I could have all seven covers...’ Robin’s heart raced. ‘I mean I could have them completed inside a month.’

‘Well, you know, I can’t make any promises. Except to talk to him. But we go back quite a long way.’

‘There you are, man,’ George said. ‘Ned talks to this Blackmore, you talk to Betty.’

Robin breathed out ruefully. ‘My part is not gonna be easy.’

‘Do your best.’ Ned Bain clapped Robin on the back. That heat again. Bonding. ‘We’re going to need all the psychic energy we can produce.’

Robin was elated. The electricity of fate. After the blackest night, the last night of winter, his personal lowest point for years, this guy just shows up without warning and things start coming together. Holism? Interconnection? The central premise in Wicca.

There was some kind of psychic energy here today all right. The kindling in the dark forest. Robin’s inner vision projected it onto the church walls like the airbrush mist around Lord Madoc. He could see it all coming together, like a beautiful painting. Betty would inevitably be drawn back. It was how these things worked.

Imbolc: it would be their rebirth, too. Robin tried to conceal some of his delight. He mustn’t look naive.

‘Well...’ He grinned. ‘I guess the whole thing would be easier if Ellis and his... flock... Like, if he just gave up and left us alone.’

George glanced at Ned Bain.

Ned Bain smiled broadly, shaking his head.

George felt it was safe to laugh.

Max said, ‘I don’t think you quite get this, do you, Robin? This is the energy. The surrounding hostility, the negativity from the village, all helps to create a rather special kind of tension. What you have is the whole struggle in microcosm. With those fanatical, fundamentalist Christians the other side of the gate singing their simplistic hymns, throwing everything at us, everything they’ve got left.’

‘Friction, man.’ George Webster rubbed his hands together and then did that smoke thing. ‘The combustion. It’s a fire festival. The dragon rises.’

42 Raising the Stakes

‘CHRIST BE WITH me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me...’

In the not-quite-silence of Ledwardine Parish Church, amid dusty skitterings at mouse and bat and early-bird level, Merrily was kneeling near the top of the chancel steps, asking for clarity of mind, clearance of all nightmares. Murmuring the ancient Celtic prayer, St Patrick’s Breastplate.

‘I bind unto myself the Name,

The Strong Name of the Trinity...’

Today was Candlemas – known to pagans as Imbolc. It concerned the quickening of life in Mother Nature’s belly. The Catholic Church blessed its candles on this day. The Church of Nicholas Ellis kept them in its windows to ward off witchcraft.

When the Breastplate was around her, Merrily went and sat in the front pew. She was wearing jeans and a sweater and Jane’s duffel coat. She was still recalling details of Ellis’s exorcism of Marianne Starkey.

Cursed dragon, we give thee warning in the names of Jesus Christ and Michael, in the names of Jehovah, Adonai, Tetragrammaton...

In the half-light, she was granted clarity. What became clear was that Ellis was following a tradition of exorcism accepted there on the border for many centuries. Betty had written out for her what she could remember of the charm found in the fireplace at St Michael’s farmhouse and also the one in Cascob Church: a mongrel exorcism, a cunning cocktail of Catholicism, Anglicanism, paganism and ritual magic. Precisely what you would expect to find in an area where cultures and languages and religions overlapped and survival often depended on juggling in the dark. This litany of names of power and magical repetition was a blunt instrument, a club. Merrily imagined Elizabeth Loyd three hundred years ago, kneeling cowed and emptied on the stone flags of St Michael’s Cascob.

When you found an adversary or an obstacle, you demonized it and then, powered by the sacred names, you beat it into the stones. Hard, practical... tested over centuries. Father Ellis doesn’t do a soft ministry.

It’s hardly Jeffery Weal, is it? Barbara Buckingham had said of Ellis’s happy-clappy evangelism. Hardly. But happy-clappy was only the surface of it. Happy-clappy could unite the population, ensnaring the hearts and minds of local and incomer alike.

But under the surface, as Judith had said, Ellis suited the village. A quiet evangelist, neither ebullient, nor charismatic in the popular sense, but practical – dressed like an army chaplain. And he could, when required to, put the fear of God into people: the councillor’s boy who took a car, threatening to bring dishonour to his respected family... the kid with a pocketful of Ecstasy... the repressed solicitor who only wanted his love for his wife to be reciprocated... the bored and lascivious licensee’s wife who, sooner or later, might tempt a local man.

Ellis had earned his support by dealing with ripples on the normally dark and stagnant waters of Old Hindwell, while focusing, beyond them, on some bigger, darker, more nebulous objective. In the village hall, he had been rooting out some imagined, petty demon of desire. But also, through Marianne, attacking Robin Thorogood and what he represented.

But what did he represent? The Thorogoods had made no threats, taken no particular stance – Betty even appeared unsure that witchcraft was the right and only way for her. Yet Ellis had lost no time in demonizing them.

Gotter be a problem for you, this, girl. Question of which side you’re on now, ennit?

Merrily stood and approached the altar. The stained-glass windows were coming alive with the dawn. She spoke the last verse of the Breastplate, the address to Jesus.

‘Let me not run from the love that you offer

But hold me safe from the forces of evil.

On each of my dyings shed your light and your love.

Keep calling me until that day comes

When with your saints I may praise you for ever.

Amen.’

Merrily walked, blinking, out of the church. It was going to be a cold, bright, hard day.

When she got home, Jane had breakfast ready. The radio was turned to 5 Live, the news station.

‘Mum, they’ve just trailed a report from Old Hindwell. It’s coming up within the next ten minutes. That was about five minutes ago.’

‘Better turn it up then.’

‘And...’ Jane cleared her throat, ‘there’s some stuff I need to tell you.’

‘Any chance it could wait? It’s just I seem to have got more to think about than at any time since my A levels.’

‘No,’ Jane said, ‘it can’t wait. It’s about a Web site, called Kali Three. Kali as in the goddess of death and destruction?’

‘Not one of ours.’ Merrily helped herself to a slice of toast. She was thinking about how best to approach Marianne Starkey. Marianne was crucial now, if Merrily was going to restrain Ellis. ‘Not even one of Betty’s.’

‘Are you listening?’

‘Sure. Sorry.’

‘There’s this obscure Web site. A really heavy occult thing. A kind of like a hit list of people who are considered a threat to the, er... to, like, the expansion of human consciousness through magic, that kind of thing. Anyway, you’re included on it.’

‘You’re kidding! Still... shows I must’ve got something right.’

Jane said, ‘Sometimes you just make me sick, you know that?’

Merrily put down her toast. ‘Jane, any other time I might be mildly affronted to think a bunch of loonies had put out a fatwa on me on the Internet, but right now... hold on, turn it up.’

Jane angrily turned up the radio far too loud. A woman said, ‘... remote Welsh border village of Old Hindwell, where the local rector has declared holy war on a community of witches occupying a one-time parish church. In Old Hindwell is our reporter, Tim Francis. Tim, what’s happening there?’

‘Well, not too much at the moment, Melissa, but I suspect this is merely the calm before the storm, because tonight is when the witches are proposing to actually reconsecrate this former Christian church to their own gods. Tonight is, in fact, the pagan festival known as Imbolc – I think I pronounced that right – which is apparently the first really important witches’ sabbath of the year.’

‘Gosh, that sounds rather sinister.’

‘Well, apparently it commemorates the start of the Celtic spring, which is not terribly sinister... However... what is seen by the rector, Nick Ellis, as a provocative gesture is the witches’ intention to celebrate that festival tonight inside the former St Michael’s Church, which in effect will make it into a pagan temple again.’

‘And are they going to dance in the nude, Tim?’

‘God,’ said Jane, ‘this woman is so sad.’

‘I would say that is, um, a strong possibility. Now, last night we saw the new owner of the church, Robin Thorogood, clearly trying to calm down the situation when he confronted Nick Ellis here at the entrance to his farm, also leading to the church.’

Clip of Robin Thorogood over rain: ‘We never touched your lousy church. There’s no dragon here, no Satan. So just... just, like, go back and tell your God we won’t hold you or your crazy stuff against him.’

Tim said, ‘However, Melissa, last night’s placatory attitude was to be short-lived. We believe about a dozen witches are now residing at the farm here, and their leader, the latest to arrive, is a former official of the British Pagan Federation and an outspoken proponent of pagan religion. That’s Ned Bain...’

Jane gasped.

‘... who joins me now. Ned Bain, the impression we all get is that you’re raising the stakes here. The very fact that you, a leading pagan activist, have come all the way from London—’

‘I think, Tim, that the stakes have already been raised enormously by Nicholas Ellis. He’s a driven man, a fanatic, who’s made life hell for two people who just wanted to be left alone to practise their religion.’

‘In a Christian church.’

‘In an abandoned church built on a site of ancient worship. Nicholas Ellis made the preposterous suggestion last night that he and his cronies should be allowed access to the site to carry out what amounts to an exorcism. Well, let’s not forget this land now belongs to Betty and Robin Thorogood. They’ve been faced with an army of militant Christians who’ve promised to turn up in even greater numbers. We’re here to support the Thorogoods.’

‘And you’ll be welcoming the Celtic spring with them tonight.’

‘Indeed.’

‘At the church itself?’

‘At a site of established ancient sanctity.’

‘And how many of you will be involved in that?’

‘A full coven. Thirteen members.’

Melissa said from the studio, ‘Ned, you going to be dancing in the nude?’

‘We shall probably be skyclad, yes, unless the weather is particularly inclement.’

‘You’ll be freezing!’

‘Melissa, our beliefs will keep us warm.’

‘Well, rather you than me. Thank you, Ned Bain, and Tim Francis. And we’ll keep you up to date with whatever happens. Now, here on 5 Live...’

Jane switched off. When she turned round, her face had darkened.

‘They’re not taking any of it seriously.’

‘Vicars and witches? What did you expect?’

‘How can you sit there and—’

‘Because I’m used to it. It’s a secular society and we’ve become a quaint anachronism. Of course they’re not taking it seriously.’ Unfortunately, they would do soon, if it came out that the police had interviewed Betty regarding Mrs Wilshire.

Jane pulled out a chair and sat down directly opposite Merrily. ‘You have got to listen to me, do you understand?’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Ned Bain—’

‘He’s a smooth operator. A clever man.’

‘It goes deeper. Up in the gallery, at Livenight, we found the researcher already knew all about you and Dad and how Dad died and where it happened and everything, and he told Irene he got that information from Ned Bain, and it’s all there on the Kali Three Web site with suggestions that you should be regarded as an enemy, like, by pagans and occultists everywhere.’

‘How do you know all that?’ The kid had her full attention now.

‘Because Irene spoke to Gerry, the researcher, afterwards.’

‘About your dad? They had all that?’

For an awful moment, she was back in that stifling, oppressive studio, dry-mouthed, with Bain lazily watching her through what appeared, for just a moment, to be Sean’s eyes.

‘Everything,’ Jane confirmed.

And earlier that man smiling Sean’s pained, ‘Isn’t it all so tedious?’ smile. All of it following a Sean-haunted drive up the M5, and then, when returning home, on that same stretch of motorway, on the way back.

‘What we figured it means,’ Jane said, ‘is that people all over the world were probably sending you ill will at that point.’

‘Down their computers?’

‘Don’t try and laugh it off. You were crap on telly.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Maybe that wasn’t all your fault, you know? There’s a lot of really heavy people out there. They knew your weaknesses: your guilt trip about Dad and the Church.’

‘That’s... silly.’

‘And now Ned Bain’s in Old Hindwell.’

‘OK, not good.’

Two religious fanatics facing each other across the ruins of a church that was spiritually suspect. Both sides raising the stakes.

Betty Thorogood came down, wearing a sloppy old baseball sweater of Jane’s. She declined an egg, but accepted toast and honey.

She’d heard the radio report from upstairs.

She said she was going back to St Michael’s.

‘I don’t want that church reconsecrating – not in anybody’s name. I’m not forecasting some apocalypse scenario, I just don’t want it to happen. I’m stopping it.’

‘You’ve got thirteen people to persuade. All determined to celebrate Candlemas.’

‘They can bloody well do it somewhere else,’ Betty said flatly.

Merrily brought coffee. ‘Tell me exactly what happens at Candlemas.’

‘It’s the festival of Brigid, the triple goddess.’

‘Three stages of womanhood,’ Jane translated, ‘maiden, mother, hag.’

‘Imbolc means belly. It’s about Mother Earth giving birth to spring, so in Wicca we put the emphasis on the mother. Three women are involved in the rite, but the mother wears the crown of lights... that’s a headdress of candles. This is a festival of light and new awakening. Of all the sabbats, it’s probably the one closest to Christianity, I’d guess.’

Merrily nodded.

‘Normally, it would be an especially good time to consecrate a church or temple, simply because it’s coming out of a long period of darkness, reawakening to spring.’

‘Everything perfect, then,’ Merrily said neutrally, ‘for giving back Old Hindwell to the old gods.’

‘No, everything’s utterly wrong – take it from me. If there were good omens before, it all reversed when we moved in. I’ve become snappy and irritable and... alienated from Robin. We’ve hardly even, you know, touched each other since we arrived. And even regarding money. Robin had the possibility – almost the certainty – of a very lucrative contract, to do seven book covers for Kirk Blackmore, the fantasy writer.’

‘Wow,’ Jane said. ‘I used to read his stuff, when I was a kid.’

‘And then the rug seems to have been pulled. Blackmore’s decided he doesn’t like Robin’s concept, and it’s Blackmore calls the shots. That’s just the latest thing to go wrong.’

Jane said, ‘Maybe you need the new light.’

Betty shook her head. ‘There won’t be any. We won’t bring that place out of the darkness; it’ll suck us in.’ She looked vaguely around, from face to face. ‘Whatever you may think about this, I’ve called out to the goddess in the night, and the goddess won’t come to me. I’m not being emotional or hysterical about this. I just don’t see a good future.’

‘OK, so you go back,’ Merrily said, ‘and you try to stop it. How do you do that?’

Betty shrugged. ‘If necessary I can just tell them all to get out. It’ll cause another row with Robin, but the house is half mine. That’s only a last resort. If I play along for a while, something subtler might occur. I don’t want to create negative vibrations, if possible. What about you?’

‘I’m going to have to try and cool Ellis. One or two ideas occur. Well, one anyway.’ Merrily’s throat was dry from too much smoking, not enough sleep. ‘Maybe we can meet somewhere, late afternoon, and see where we stand.’

‘There’s a footbridge,’ Betty said, ‘that leads from the church to the other side of the brook.’

‘I know it. Four o’clock?’ Part of her was saying this was whimsy, that the only really important things were to, first, find Barbara Buckingham, and second, persuade the police to investigate the Hindwell Trust. ‘Betty, what do you think, seriously, is likely to happen if we can’t stop this tonight?’

Betty shook her head quickly, non-committally.

‘The dragon gets out,’ Jane said, ‘whatever that means.’

‘I’ve been thinking.’ Betty looked at Merrily. ‘The problem with this place is nothing really to do with us. But it is to do with you, I suspect – with what you do. Ellis thought it needed exorcizing. I’m not sure he was wrong.’

‘But not by him.’

‘No,’ Betty said, ‘not by him.’

‘You mean... by me?’ Merrily felt obscurely honoured and immediately guilty about that.

‘I wondered about tonight,’ Betty said. ‘Candlemas is Candlemas. I suppose it’s a good time, wherever you stand. I mean, I’d go in with you, if you thought that would help. Or, if you thought that would be spiritually wrong, I’d stay out of the way.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Would you think about it, Merrily? It’s become kind of central to everything, hasn’t it?’

‘But... exorcizing a church...’

‘Like you keep saying,’ Jane said, ‘it isn’t a church any more.’

‘All right, I’ll talk to the bishop.’

‘Please don’t do that,’ Betty said. ‘He might suggest you have other priests along. That would bother me. I don’t want it to look like a formal sellout.’

Merrily nodded. ‘OK.’

‘Wow,’ Jane said.

43 Mitigating Circumstances

JANE HAD CALLED Eirion at the rotting mansion and there was no answer. Well, there was an answer... on a machine, and in Welsh.

Like she wasn’t already feeling excluded enough. Gomer had collected Betty and taken her back to Old Hindwell, Mum had gone off on her own. Little Jane had been given the really important job of relaying any messages to Mum on her mobile.

Bastards!

‘I can’t speak bloody Welsh!’ she howled over the message. ‘Just tell Irene... Eirion... to call me. It’s very urgent. It’s Jane Wat—’

She shut up. The message was being translated.

‘Dafydd and Gwennan Lewis are unable to take your call. Please leave your message after the tone. Diolch yn fawr.’

‘OK. Please, please, tell Eirion to ring me. It’s Jane Watkins. It’s very urgent. Please?’ Realizing she’d ended on a kind of strangled sob. Maybe that would underline the urgency, or maybe just the existing suspicions of the wealthy and powerful Dafydd Lewis about the hysterical English. It was not bloody fair, because she now had, like, masses of new data to lay on Eirion. He could hit the Net, and they could crack this thing wide open.

Jane paced the kitchen. Actually, she was quite proud of Mum this time, agreeing to undertake an exorcism on behalf of a witch. Like, it was a really heavy decision to have to make. But had she accepted the significance of Kali Three? It really was a pity they hadn’t got a decent computer.

Ah!

Jane went rapidly round the house, doing what had to be done – laying a fire in the drawing room, putting out dried cat food for Ethel, and all the time thinking hard. She didn’t need Irene; she just needed an online computer.

Sophie!

Sophie had one in the Deliverance office. It was only right that the diocese should pay for this research.

There should be a bus to Hereford passing through Ledwardine within the hour. Jane ran a brush through her hair, tugged on her fleece coat and was out of there. There’d be some resistance from Sophie, sure, but nothing Jane couldn’t handle with the usual combination of pathos and rat-like cunning.

She bought a Mars bar from the Eight-till-Late and stood on the square munching it, relishing the freedom to do things. Back at bloody school next week, with dismal GCSEs looming. Although the public school system was this, like, totally disgusting anachronism, she wished she was at the cathedral school with Eirion; at least it was in the middle of town.

It was bright but unexpectedly cold on the square. Jane chewed and stamped her feet on the cobbles. A silver BMW went past, then slowed suddenly and backed up and stopped on the edge of the square. The window glided down on the passenger side. Some sex beast wondering if she was in need of a lift.

‘Excuse me, little girl.’ Creepy voice sibilating from the bourgeois, tinted interior. Eyes narrowing, Jane pocketed the Mars bar and sashayed over. ‘Looking for somewhere, I am, see?’ he oozed. ‘Wonder if you can point me in the right direction. Little place called... if I can just see it on the map... Ah, got it...’ The passenger door was thrown wide open. ‘England!’

Jane glared in delight. ‘You bastard!’

‘Good morning, Eirion,’ Eirion said. ‘How’s the whiplash? Well, it’s quite a bit more comfortable, thank you, Jane.’

Jane got in. The leather seat creaked luxuriously. ‘Where’d you steal the flash Kraut wheels?’

‘Gwen’s, it is. She owes me. Don’t ask. Are you doing the decent thing and going to school?’

‘Well, I was, naturally. But, on second thoughts, I think we’ll go to Hereford Cathedral. I can show you the Deliverance office, in the gatehouse.’

‘Jane...’ Eirion snatched off his baseball cap and his dark glasses. ‘Half the school goes past there.’

‘You won’t be spotted, you’ll have your head bent over a keyboard. By lunchtime your eyes will be so terminally weakened you’ll be regretting you ever left the land of Druids and sad male voice choirs.’

Eirion sighed and let out the clutch. He handed her a brown A4 envelope. ‘Read this.’

‘What is it?’

‘What do you think it is?’

Jane pulled out a thin sheaf of printouts.

‘Kali Three.’

She read about her mother and her father.

At home with a young child, Merrily Watkins was horrified to discover that her husband was ‘representing’ Gerald McConnell, a West Midlands businessman who would later be jailed for four years for fraud and money-laundering. It was this...

Jane looked across at Eirion. She felt embarrassed.

Eirion drove serenely on. ‘There but for the grace of God, Jane. When my father was on the board of the Welsh Development Agency... Never mind, he’d have been out by now even if the charges had stuck.’

‘You’re just saying that to make me feel better.’

‘I wish. Read the other stuff, on Bain and his old man. Start at the top of page five.’

Jane read:

Ned was ten years old when his mother, Edward Bainbridge’s first wife, Susan, walked out on her husband. They were quietly divorced and, soon afterwards, Bainbridge formed a relationship with Mrs Frances Wesson, the widow of a chaplain at his college. Mrs Wesson had remained a strong, even fanatical Christian, although the extent of this did not become apparent to Bainbridge or his son until after the marriage.

Strange how formally this was written. Like out of a real biography, not the usual chatty crap you got off the Net. It drew you into what, even though it was then the mid-1970s, seemed like a Victorian kind of world.

Thus Ned entered his teenage years in a stifling High Church household dominated by the beautiful but austere Frances Wesson, whose own two children seemed to be accorded special privileges. To please his new wife, Bainbridge, hitherto a lukewarm Christian at most, began to attend church services twice every Sunday. Ned was soon glad to be sent away to public school, where he was free to pursue an interest in subjects which would certainly have been forbidden at home.

During school holidays, he became aware of his father’s slide into depression. Edward Bainbridge had given up writing poetry after his latest volume had been derided as maudlin, self-pitying and, indeed, pitifully inept. Unsurprisingly, his academic reputation was crumbling and his drinking had become a problem. All of this was concurrent with the dissolution of the Bainbridge marriage, with the couple living increasingly separate lives. If Edward now no longer attended church, his wife had inflicted all its trappings and symbolism on what remained of their domestic life. The house in Oxford had become heavy with icons and crucifixes; its drawing room had a constant and pervading smell of incense, and Frances had even set up a private chapel in a pantry next to the kitchen.

The summer of 1975 brought a severe and life-changing shock for Ned. Edward Bainbridge’s brother, David, arrived at the school to break the news that his father was dead. Ned learned, to his horror, that his father had bled to death on the floor of the private chapel, and that his stepmother had already been charged with murder.

Some days later, to the eighteen-year-old Ned’s outrage, the charge was reduced to manslaughter, to which Frances Bainbridge had agreed to plead guilty. There was, she had claimed, a strong element of self-defence. According to Mrs Bainbridge, her husband, who had been drinking heavily for most of the day, had come hammering on the door of the chapel while she was at prayer and, when she refused to admit him, had kicked in the door, burst into the tiny chapel and proceeded to tear down drapes and overturn the altar. When she screamed at him to get out, he began to slash viciously with a kitchen knife at a Victorian picture of Christ, until he stumbled and dropped the knife – whereupon Mrs Bainbridge snatched it up. Edward Bainbridge then attacked his wife, tearing at her dress, and in her struggle to get away she stabbed him fatally in the throat.

The original murder charge was reduced to manslaughter after Frances Bainbridge’s description of the events – somewhat unconvincing to Ned – was supported by her son Simon, aged fifteen, and her twelve-year-old daughter Madeleine, both of whom said they had witnessed the struggle. Frances Bainbridge pleaded guilty to manslaughter, but walked free from the court after being given a two-year suspended sentence because of the mitigating circumstances.

Ned Bainbridge returned to school to sit his A levels before going up to Oxford, to his father’s old college where, with fellow students, he formed his first coven.

Eirion drove into Hereford via Whitecross. ‘Quite a significant family skeleton, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘You can understand that guy not being over-fond of the Church.’

44 Feel the Light

GREG HAD SHAVED. He wore a clean shirt. He stood in the back doorway at the end of the yard and made rapid wiping movements with his arms.

‘No, no, no.’

Merrily stopped about four yards away. ‘She’s worse?’

‘She’s better,’ Greg said. ‘That’s the point, innit? I’m grateful for you taking the witch away and everyfing, but I’m not having you upsetting my wife.’

The day, like Greg, had hardened up. Merrily dug her hands into the pockets of Jane’s much-borrowed duffel coat. She nodded, resigned, looking down at all the crushed glass ground into the pitted concrete yard.

‘I’m sorry, Reverend,’ Greg said. ‘I said I’d ask her if she’d talk to you, but I didn’t in the end. I don’t want noffink bringing it back. These past two days – bleedin’ nightmare. You understand, don’t you?’

‘You think she’s coming out of it?’

‘She’s talking to me. That’s enough for now.’

‘Right, well...’ Merrily shrugged. ‘Thank you. I’ll see you, Greg.’

It was nearly eleven a.m. Martyn Kinsey, of BBC Wales, had spotted her going into the yard, and given her a conspiratorial wink. Martyn was going to be her last resort, if she got nowhere with Marianne Starkey. Martyn Kinsey and a big, unchristian lie: Entirely off the record, the diocese has received two complaints, of a very serious nature, against Father Nicholas Ellis. Yes, of course from women.

Last resort, though.

Merrily had reached the entrance to the alley which led from the Black Lion yard to the village when she heard the wobble and slide of a sash window. ‘Who’s this?’ a woman called down.

‘’S all right,’ Greg rasped. ‘I dealt wiv it. Just go back and siddown, willya?’

‘Hey!’ Marianne leaned out of the upstairs window. ‘I saw you, din’ I?’

Merrily paused. Please, God...

‘Inna toilets,’ Marianne said, ‘with Judy Prosser. ’Cept you was wearing a... whatsit round your neck.’

Merrily put a hand to her throat. ‘Day off today.’

Greg said nervously, ‘Marianne, just leave it, yeah?’

‘You wanna cuppa tea, love?’

‘That would be really very nice,’ Merrily said. ‘It’s quite cold again today, isn’t it?’

Greg hung around, restive, breathing down his nose. Marianne waved him away. ‘It’ll be OK. You go and replace your kegs.’

They were upstairs in the living room of the flat above the pub. The furniture looked inexpensive, but it was all newish, as if they’d ditched all their old stuff when they moved here. For a bright new start.

Greg waved a finger at his wife. ‘You just say what you wanna say.’

Marianne was in a cream towelling robe, and she wore no make-up. She slid back into a big lemon sofa opposite the television. The sound was turned down on two young women ranting at Robert Kilroy-Silk.

‘Slept late,’ Marianne said. ‘Must have a clear conscience.’

‘Good.’

‘You reckon it can really do that? Wipe the slate clean?’

‘Why not?’

‘Siddown... please.’ Marianne picked up a cigarette packet from the sofa. ‘Ain’t taken everything away, mind. I still need these. Don’t suppose you do?’

‘Actually...’ Merrily slipped off her coat, let it fall to the carpet. She sat on the edge of an armchair beside the TV, and accepted one of Marianne’s menthol cigarettes.

‘Blimey, you’ll go to hell, love. In spite of it all.’

‘I prefer to think I’ll just go to heaven a bit sooner. How do you feel now, Marianne?’

‘Bit weird. Bit hollow.’

‘All happened kind of suddenly, hasn’t it?’

‘Can’t believe it. I feel like a little girl. All nervous. Need me hand held.’

Probably why she’d been so glad to see Merrily. A lady priest. Someone who would know, would understand.

‘I mean, you shouldn’t be feeling like that at someone’s funeral, should you?’ Marianne said. ‘Ain’t right.’

‘You mean feeling good?’

‘Yeah.’

Merrily lit their cigarettes. ‘Finding yourself joining in the singing?’

‘The singing. Sure.’

‘Mmm. I know what that’s like.’

‘I should think you do, Reverend.’

‘Merrily.’

‘Nice name. Yeah, that’s what happens, Merrily. I only went along for a laugh. No, not a laugh, I was hacked off with everybody, with this place, with Greg. Like, Greg’s sayin’, one of us oughta go, put in an appearance. It’s the way they are, the locals, innit? God-fearing? So, yeah, OK, I’ll do it – ’cos they all reckon I’m a slapper – I’ll be down that hall with me hat on and I’ll put on a real show for ’em.’

Merrily smiled. ‘And in the middle of the show... wow, it turns into the real thing.’

‘Cloud nine, love. Like after half a bottle of vodka? Nah, not really. I mean, I was so ashamed. Joyful, yet ashamed. Ashamed of me. I was horrified at me – what I was, what I’d been. I wanted... what’s the word...?’

‘Redemption?’

‘That’s a bleeding big word.’

‘Big thing.’

‘Do you know, I went out the back afterwards, and I was sick over the fence? Sick as a dog, with all that hating of meself pouring out. After that, I felt very... light, you know? Cut loose. Then this lady come over, I don’t know her name, but she lives in a bungalow on the road out of here, and that’s where we went. Some other ladies come too, and they was all really kind. I cried most of the time.’

Merrily smoked and nodded. It was difficult to believe it could happen so quickly until you encountered it, but it did happen. It happened particularly to people in crisis, depressed people and – unexpectedly – to angry, cynical people.

‘Found I could talk to them. Talked about stuff I never talked about since I left London. Personal stuff, you know? One of the ladies, she says, “I knew you was in trouble when I seen you and that feller.” ’

‘Robin Thorogood.’

Marianne shivered. ‘I thought it was me invited him. But he was playing with me. He’s a dark person, he is, Merrily. He brought out the bad and lustful part of me.’

‘Who told you he was a dark person?’

‘In the paper, wannit? They come round with the paper... yesterday.’

‘Who did?’

‘Eleri, from the post office. And Judy Prosser. I’d been to church – to the hall – on Sunday, and it was wonderful, I was blown away all over again, really. And afterwards I was introduced to Father Ellis, and he’s like, “I can tell you been deeply troubled. I feel you been exposed to a great evil.” And it sets me off crying again, and he takes my hand and he says, in this lovely soft voice, he says, “You come back to me when you feel ready to have the disease taken away.” And the next day Eleri come round with the paper, and there he is, that Robin, his face – like I never seen it before, I mean you could see the evil in him, snarling, vicious. I went a bit hysterical when I seen that picture. He was like they said he was.’

‘What happened then?’

‘They took me up the hall. Father Ellis was there.’

‘Did they tell you why you were going to the hall?’

‘What?’

‘Doesn’t matter. Father Ellis...?’

‘He was dressed all in white, as usual. He was like a saint, and I felt so comforted. I felt I was in the right hands, the hands of a living saint. And we sits down and Father Ellis explains about the demon what Robin had put inside of me.’

‘Those were his words?’

‘Once he’d given me the demon, he didn’t wanna know me no more, he just pushed me away.’

‘Robin?’

‘Pushed me away, and I fell down in the street. The demon did that. That was the demon. After the pub closed, Greg and me, we had this terrible ding-dong. I’m insulting him, I’m like belittling him, you know what I mean? I’m screaming, “Go on, do it to me, you got any bottle.” Poor Greg. Turns him off like a light, you talk dirty. But that wasn’t me. I know now that wasn’t me. That was the demon.’

‘Is that what Father Ellis said?’

‘He said he could take it away, but it wouldn’t be easy, and it was not to be gone into lightly and I would have to understand that I would be giving myself to the Holy Spirit. He said it was a foul entity, the demon, and it was gonna have to come out... like a rotten tooth.’

Merrily said. ‘You mean... out of your mouth?’

Marianne’s eyes narrowed, lines appeared either side of her mouth. She looked accusingly at Merrily. ‘Judy said you come to spy on Father Ellis.’

‘I was sent to support him,’ Merrily said. ‘From the bishop, remember? The bishop thought he needed some help.’

Marianne looked confused. ‘That Judy, she took you outside, din’t she? I was glad when she did that.’

‘We hadn’t met before. I think she was a bit suspicious of me.’

‘She took you outside,’ Marianne said. ‘I was very glad.’

‘We had a good chat,’ Merrily assured her. ‘We worked things out. Marianne, do you remember what Father Ellis did... to exorcize the demon of lust?’

Marianne blinked, affronted. ‘He said the Church has strict rules about the exorcizing of demons. They don’t just do it. You could wind up exorcizing someone who was mentally ill, couldn’t you?’

‘Er... yes. Yes, you could.’

Ellis told her this? Merrily’s heart sank a little. This was established Deliverance procedure. You didn’t even contemplate exorcism until all the other possibilities, usually psychiatric, had been eliminated.

‘Don’t get me wrong, love, he could’ve done what he liked without a word, the way I was feeling, long as he took it away. But he explained it was a disease. I needed checking over by a doctor, and what he was doing should be medically supervised.’

‘He said that?’

‘Dr Banks-Morgan was there for the whole thing,’ Marianne said. ‘That’s the kind of man Father Ellis is.’

The male figure in the doorway.

She sat in her car for a while.

Then she rang Hereford Police, asked for Mumford. He was out, so she rang Eileen Cullen at home, hoping she wasn’t asleep. A man answered; Merrily realized she knew nothing about Cullen’s domestic situation. When she came on the line, she sounded softer, a bathrobe voice.

‘Before you say a word, Merrily, there is one incident I will never talk about again, not to you, not to anyone.’

‘Angina,’ Merrily said.

‘Ask away,’ Cullen said.

‘The pills you take for angina. Tri-something?’

‘Trinitrin. You feel it coming on, you stick one under your tongue.’

‘Becomes automatic?’

‘Long-term sufferers, they practically do it in their sleep.’

‘Take a hypothetical case. Person on Trinitrin for angina becomes converted to herbal remedies. Says I’m going to stop filling myself up with these nasty drugs. Then she feels an attack coming on, so what does she do?’

‘Reaches for the Trinitrin. Says I’ll stop fillin’ meself up with these awful drugs tomorrow.’

‘All right.’ No time for the subtle approach. ‘Hypothetically, if, in circumstances like this, a doctor saw an opportunity to do away with a patient in a way which might throw blame on someone else, say for instance the herbalist... how would he go about it?’

‘Jesus, Merrily, what is this?’

‘It’s, er... a question. Just a question.’

‘Well here’s your answer – a hundred ways. Could casually swap her Trinitrins for blanks, for starters. Who’s gonna know? It’s easy for a doctor. Always has been.’

Robin had been gazing from his studio window when he saw her walking, like some grounded angel, across the yard, and he’d gone running wildly through the farmhouse, like some big, stupid kid, knocking a bowl of cornflakes out of the hands of a mousy, pregnant witch from Gloucester, called Alice.

Now he held Betty’s hand, and he was breathing evenly for the first time in many hours. They shared this big cushion they used to have in their previous apartment. Only now it was on the floor of the parlour, the room with the inglenook which was now the house temple.

They’d been left alone in here, just Robin and Betty and the altar and the crown of lights.

The kindly, mature witch, Alexandra, Betty’s one-time tutor, had made it. Alexandra was a twig-weaver, or whatever you call it, and this was a tight wreath of hedgerow strands, like a crown of thorns without the thorns. Across the top of the wreath was shaped a kind of skullcap made out of one of those foil trays you got around your supermarket quiche. The candles which ringed its perimeter were the kind you had on birthday cakes, though not coloured.

‘A Blue Peter job,’ Betty had said with a wistful smile, referring to some TV show she used to watch as a kid, where you were taught how to make useful artefacts from household debris. Foil trays apparently featured big.

‘I love you,’ Robin said. ‘I want you to wear it tonight.’

Outside on a calm night, with all the candles lit around the head of a beautiful woman, the crown of lights looked awesome.

‘It’s the mother wears the lights,’ Betty said.

‘This is special.’

‘What would Ned say?’

‘He’ll be cool.’

Everything was cool, coming together, happening just like he’d known it would. He hadn’t asked where she’d spent last night. That didn’t matter. She sometimes needed time to think things out. He recalled how one moonlit night she’d gone out walking from Shrewsbury into the countryside, hadn’t returned until dawn, had covered maybe twenty miles and hadn’t noticed the time go by. He’d been frantic, but she was her own person. She was his priestess. He would trust her for ever, through life after life after life.

‘Ned’s even gonna fix things with Kirk Blackmore, I tell you about that?’

‘Yes,’ Betty said, ‘I’m sure he will.’

‘Bets, things are really turning around. It’s Imbolc. I can feel the light coming through.’

‘Yes,’ Betty said.

Down the hill, into the forestry land, until she came to the point where there were farm buildings either side of the road and a Land Rover with a ‘Christ is the Light’ sticker. Oh, he had his uses, did Jesus Christ: the very name served as a disinfectant.

Merrily turned in to a rutted track between two stone and timbered barns, and there was the farmhouse, grey brown, black windows. No garden, just a yard of dirt and brown gravel, where she parked the Volvo. There was a glazed front porch, its door hanging ajar. She saw the interior door swing open before she was even into the porch, and Judith Prosser standing there, cool and rangy in her orange rugby shirt.

‘You’re late, Mrs Watkins. Had you down for an early riser, I did.’

The banter was wrapped around Judith’s need always to be ahead of the situation. This visit must, on no account, be seen as a surprise.

‘Late night, Mrs Prosser.’

‘I’ve coffee on.’

‘That would be good... Erm, I felt there were things left in the air from last night.’

‘No bad thing, sometimes,’ Judith replied swiftly. ‘Left in the air, they have a chance to blow away.’

‘But sometimes they stick around and the air goes sour, and that’s not a good thing in my experience.’

‘Oh, your experience.’ Holding open the door for Merrily. ‘Profound today, is it, Mrs Watkins?’

‘You have a problem with profound?’ Merrily blinked. It was dark inside and the hulking furniture made it darker.

‘Life’s too short to tolerate problems.’

‘Life’s too short for cover-ups, Mrs Prosser,’ Merrily said.

Judith turned to face her. They were standing in a square hall dominated by a huge, over-ornate chair with a nameplate on the back. It looked like the seat of a council chairman or a presiding magistrate. Judith leaned an elbow on one of its carved shoulders.

‘As I said last night, it would be stupid for you to react to silly rumours.’

‘Here’s the situation,’ Merrily said. ‘I was there, I saw the whole thing: the cross, the petroleum jelly. Also Dr Coll standing in the doorway – and didn’t that explain why a bunch of local matrons were able to sit there and watch Ellis violate a woman with a metal cross? Because there was a doctor present. This, of course, makes everything all right, above board, entirely respectable, clinically proven.’

Judith Prosser flicked a speck of dust or ash from the point of the chairman’s chair.

‘I’m not sure how far from being a police matter this is,’ Merrily continued, ‘but we’re very close to finding out.’

45 Stupid Wires

JANE TYPED IN the word ‘charismatic’. The usual, mainly irrelevant list appeared. She grabbed the mouse, dithered over ‘Charismatic Q and A’.

‘Try it,’ Eirion suggested. ‘Might lead somewhere better.’ On the screen: ‘The Charismatic Movement: what in the name of God is it all about?’

‘Click,’ Eirion said.

The Charismatic Movement (from the Greek charismata, meaning ‘spiritual gifts’) developed in the 1950s and ’60s from the Pentecostal movement, crossing over the denominations, embracing the sphere of angelology and the gifts of healing, prophecy, speaking in tongues and power-prayer. It reached a new peak worldwide in the 1990s...

There was a list of options. Jane clicked on ‘Yes, I want to talk to God.’

They needed all the help they could get.

Sophie had said she shouldn’t be allowing this, before shutting them in the Deliverance office with the computer.

And she wanted copies of anything they found.

Jane had said, ‘This is awfully good of you... Mrs Hill.’

Collecting a contemptuous frown and, ‘Jane, you are not among the people with whose patronage I can cope. Try “evangelism”.’

On the way here, Jane had told Eirion virtually everything she’d learned so far – about Terry Penney, about pentagrams... The poor little Chapel boy had seemed unnerved, regaining his cool only when he saw the computer. Smiling his famous smile at Sophie, who wore a checked woollen skirt with a grey twinset and pearls – Sophie, who might one day be the last person in the entire universe still wearing a twinset and pearls.

Jane clicked again, losing enthusiasm for talking to God. When it was working fast and well, the Internet could give you the illusion of being God – you could imagine Him operating like this, constructing human situations with a click of the mouse, running programs, consigning icons to the dumpbin.

‘Evangelism’, though, had been a bummer. There were background articles on St John the Evangelist. There were four Web sites about some kind of computer software with that name. There were no obvious links into crank preachers in the American South who might have known Nick Ellis; and ‘Charismatics’ proved little better.

‘I could try “Bible Belt”,’ Eirion offered.

‘You’d probably get suppliers of religious fashion accessories,’ Jane said gloomily.

‘ “Cults”?’

‘No chance. People never think of themselves as being in a cult. “Just off to the cult, don’t wait up” – doesn’t happen.’

‘What we need is a Christian search engine.’

‘What we need is divine intervention.’ Jane walked over to the window which overlooked the forecourt of the Bishop’s Palace. No good searching for it out there.

‘OK,’ Eirion said. ‘What are we really asking for?’

‘Some big, rattling skeleton in Ellis’s vestment closet. Something that maybe caused him to leave America, come back here in a hurry. When you think about it, most Brits who go over to the States tend to stay there, making piles of money. So it’s reasonable to think Ellis came back because something happened to make him kind of persona non grata. Like he was the leader of a mass suicide cult who contrived not to go down with the rest.’

‘We’d have heard about it.’

‘We’re stuffed.’ Jane angrily keyed in ‘loony fundamentalist bastards’, and the Web found, for some no doubt entirely logical reason, a bunch of science fiction and fantasy writers including David Wingrove, David Gemmell and Kirk Blackmore.

‘We’re just not asking the right questions.’

‘Kirk Blackmore... where did I hear that?’

Sophie came in then, with a piece of paper, a name written on it. ‘Try this.’

‘Ah,’ Jane said, as Blackmore came up on the screen. ‘This was the guy whose covers Robin Thorogood was going to design, but they pulled the plug.’

Eirion was staring up at Sophie, bewildered.

‘I used the telephone.’ Sophie inclined her neck, swan-like. ‘It’s rather old-tech, it involves the less-exact medium of human speech, but it does tend to be more effective when dealing with the clergy.’

‘ “Marshall McAllman”,’ Eirion read.

‘Before the Reverend Nicholas Ellis came to New Radnor and then Old Hindwell, he was a curate for just over a year at a parish outside Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I’ve talked to his former vicar, the Reverend Alan Patterson, who only found out after the Reverend Mr Ellis had been with him for several months that he’d previously been a personal assistant to the Reverend Mr McAllman – which did not entirely please him.’

‘Let’s put it in, Jane.’ Eirion keyed in the name, while the computer was still showing:

KIRK BLACKMORE ORACLE.

The reclusive Celtic scribe returns with a

remarkable new Lord Madoc novel which...

‘Found,’ Eirion said, after a few seconds. ‘ “The Mobile Ministry of Marshall McAllman”.’

He clicked. Kirk Blackmore vanished.

‘There you are.’ Sophie peered. ‘ “Angelweb Factfile. The journeys of Reverend Marshall McAllman were directed by the Will of God and took him from Oklahoma...” ’

‘ “... to South Carolina”,’ Eirion read from the screen, ‘ “via Arkansas and Tennessee, dispensing a low-key but extremely potent evangelism effectively tailored to the needs of small towns and simple folk. He developed a loyal following after several witnessed instances of prophecy, divine inspiration and angelic” blah blah blah... “Reverend McAllman retired in 1998, a disillusioned man, after surviving a campaign by an unscrupulous journalist on a Tennessee newspaper, the Goshawk Talon. Although there remains considerable debate about Reverend McAllman’s ministry, his name is still revered in” blah, blah—’

‘There you have it, then,’ Sophie interrupted. ‘Your next port of call must surely be the, ah, Goshawk Talon.’

‘Does that mean it’s in a place called Goshawk?’ Jane wondered.

‘Doesn’t matter, let’s just put it in,’ Eirion said.

‘ “Found”. Some stuff on birds of prey. And... “The Goshawk Talon and Marshall McAllman”... OK.’ Eirion clicked, waited. ‘Oh.’

The file you are seeking is unavailable.

Jane’s face fell. ‘What do we do now?’

‘A technical brick wall.’ Sophie sighed. ‘Hard to imagine how we survived for so long without all this.’ Then she did something most un-Sophie-like – stamped her foot. ‘Phone them, child! They presumably have telephones in Goshawk, Tennessee. If this publication still exists, it shouldn’t take long to find the number. If it doesn’t, we shall have to think of something else. Get on to international directory enquiries.’

‘I don’t know how.’

Sophie sighed in mild contempt. ‘Leave it to me.’ She stalked out.

‘Wow,’ Jane said. ‘The turbo twinset.’

Eirion smiled his Eirion smile. It did things to her, but this was not the time. There never seemed to be a time. The sudden urgency manifested by Sophie made Jane quite tense. What if someone was ringing home with information far more important than anything they could hope to find on the Net, and she wasn’t there to relay it. Paranoid, she rang the vicarage answering machine. One message for Mum to call Uncle Ted. Sod that.

‘We seem to be drifting a long way from Kali Three,’ Eirion said. He started to key it in.

‘No, don’t.’ Jane leapt up and stood at the window, staring down at the woodpile below. There was a sense of being very close to something, but it was too indistinct, ghostly. She felt that invoking Kali Three would somehow bring bad luck. She turned back to the room.

‘We have to go there.’

‘Old Hindwell?’ Eirion said. ‘I’m not sure about that. Why?’

‘We just do.’

‘Absolutely not.’ Sophie was in the doorway.

‘Sophie, there’s some really heavy—’

‘Don’t you think your mother has enough to worry about? Sit down and speak to the man from the paper. Or would you prefer me to do it? Perhaps it might be better if I did.’

‘She’s right,’ Eirion said. ‘She’s going to sound so much more authoritative than either of us. Especially to Joe-Bob McCabe, of the Goshawk Talon.’

‘Ah sure lerve your accent, ma’am,’ said Jane. The only person from Tennessee she’d ever heard talk was Elvis.

‘The man’s name,’ said Sophie, ‘is Eliot Williams. He’s busy at the moment, but his editor’s getting him to call me back. I think he rather senses a story.’

‘Wow,’ Jane said, ‘you’re, like, incredible.’

But Sophie had already returned to her office, where the phone was ringing.

46 Nine Points

A DARK, VICTORIAN living room. Merrily imprisoned in the lap of a huge, high-sided leather armchair, coat folded on her knees, cup and saucer on top of that.

Judith Prosser was adept at disadvantaging her visitors.

‘And since when is religion a matter for the police, Mrs Watkins?’

‘When it’s sexual assault.’ Merrily drank some of the coffee. Perversely, it was good coffee.

‘Do you know what I think?’ Judith’s own chair put her about a foot higher than Merrily. ‘I’ve been enquiring about you, and do you know what I think? I think that Father Ellis has dared to intrude into what you consider to be your back yard. He is doing what you think only you should be doing.’

‘You think I’d do—?’

‘How would I know what namby-pamby thing you would do these days, when the Church is like a branch of the social services?’ A withering contempt for both.

‘Now we’re getting to it,’ Merrily said.

‘Are we, Mrs Watkins?’

Merrily tried to sit up in the chair. She felt like a child. Around the walls were dozens of photographs, mostly of men wearing chains of office, although a group of more recent ones showed boys with motorbikes and trophies.

‘What are “we” getting to?’ Judith leaned back, arms folded.

‘The question of Old Hindwell preferring to do its own thing. Which is kind of admirable in one sense, I suppose.’

Judith reared up. ‘It is entirely admirable, my girl. This is an independent part of the world. What do we need with the mandarins in Cardiff and London and Canterbury? The English. Even the Welshies... they all think they can come out yere and do what they like. When Councillor Prosser was on the old Radnor District Council, they used to have to employ young officials, trotting out their fancy ideas – hippies and vegetarians, half of them. It was, “Oh, you can’t build there... you have to use this colour of slate on your roofs... you can’t do this, you can’t do that.” Well, they were put in their place soon enough. The local people, it is, who decides. We know what’s needed, we know what works. And Father Ellis, even though he’s not from yere, is a man with old values and a clear, straightforward, practical approach, based on tradition. He understands tradition.’

Merrily was tired of this. ‘How many people has he exorcized so far?’

‘I can tell you that all of them have come freely to him and asked for it to be done.’

‘Like your son?’

A pause. ‘Gomer Parry again, I suppose.’

‘Doesn’t matter where it came from. I just wondered if your son actually went along to Ellis and asked to be cleansed of the taking-and-driving-away demon.’

‘His parents took him.’ Judith scowled. ‘Another problem in today’s world is that parents don’t take responsibility. We took him to Father Ellis, Councillor Prosser and I. It was our duty.’

‘And you really think he had a demon inside him that demanded the full casting-out bit?’

‘Oh... Mrs... Watkins...’ Exasperated, Judith stood and went to lean an arm on the high mantelpiece. ‘They all have demons in them, whether it’s mischievous imps or worse. In the old days, the demons were beaten out of them at school. Now, if a teacher raises a hand to a child, he’s in court for assault, and nothing the poor magistrate can do to help him.’

‘I see.’ There was an awful logic to this: exorcism as a tool of public order. Evidently the local women had decided that the wanton demon in Marianne Starkey – which perhaps made some local men a little restless, a touch frisky – should be eradicated before it led to trouble. Marianne’s reaction to the male witch adding a piquantly topical flavour to the exercise.

‘Menna,’ Merrily said. ‘What about Menna?’

Judith brought her arm slowly down to her side, stiffening ever so slightly.

‘Judith, did Menna herself go to Father Ellis and beg for exorcism, to get rid of the molesting spirit of Mervyn Thomas?’

Judith was silent.

‘Or was it J.W.’s idea? In his role as husband. And father figure.’

Judith said, eyes unmoving, ‘How do you know she was cleansed?’

‘Wasn’t she?’

‘Is that any business of yours or mine?’ First sign of a significant loss of cool. ‘What would I know about the private affairs of Mr and Mrs J.W. Weal? Was I supposed to be her guardian and her keeper all her life?’

‘You were obviously still concerned about her. You went to visit her regularly. You were still, by all accounts, her only real friend. You were the best person to realize she was... still a victim.’

‘He loved her!’

‘He suffocated her, Mrs Prosser. When she was in hospital, he tended her, he washed her, hardly let the nurses near her. I saw him with a bowl of water, as if he was baptizing her all over again. As if he was somehow confirming and reinforcing what Father Ellis had done.’

‘You see everything, don’t you?’

‘Look, I just happened to be there, with Gomer the night his Minnie died. J.W. was like a priest, giving his wife the last rites. But she was already dead. Ellis said at the funeral that he’d baptized them together. Was that a public thing? Were you present?’

Judith came away from the fireplace. There was a large, iron coal stove in it, closed up. She walked to the small window and stood looking out. She was thinking. And she evidently did not want Merrily to see her thinking.

‘No,’ she said eventually. ‘No, I was not there, as such.’

‘Am I right in thinking that Menna was still felt to be... possessed, if you like, by her father?’

‘He was not a pleasant man,’ Judith said.

And did you get Menna on the Pill from an early age because you were afraid that what happened to Barbara might happen to her, too? Merrily didn’t ask that. It perhaps didn’t need asking, not right now.

‘You couldn’t really be sure that Merv was leaving her alone, could you?’

Judith didn’t reply.

‘And whatever he was like, she was still dependent on him. Dependent on a strong man? Which Weal realized, and lost no time in exploiting.’

Judith kept on looking out of the window. ‘He was too old for her, yes. Too rigid in his ways, perhaps. But she was a flimsy, delicate thing. She would always need protection. She was never going to have much of a life with Jeffery, but she would at least be protected.’

‘Like a moth in a jar,’ Merrily said – and Judith turned sharply around. Merrily met her clear gaze. ‘When exactly did you begin to think that J.W. Weal, in his way, might be as bad for Menna as her father had been?’

‘It was not my business any more.’

‘Oh come on, you’d known that girl all her life. Did it really not occur to you that Weal might think he was somehow still in competition with the dead Mervyn Thomas for Menna’s affections? If that’s the right word? That maybe he didn’t think he was getting... everything he was entitled to.’

Judith came back to the fireplace. ‘Who is this going to help now?’

Merrily thought back to Barbara Buckingham. Possession is nine points of the law. Perhaps there was still a chance to help Barbara.

But that wouldn’t matter much to Judith Prosser.

‘Menna,’ Merrily said softly. ‘Perhaps it will help Menna.’

And so it came out.

The big room at the back of the house. The dining room in which probably no one ever dined. The bay-windowed room with rearing shadows. The room facing the mausoleum.

‘This was where it was actually done?’ Merrily said. ‘How do you know that?’

‘Because I watched, of course. I stood in the garden and I spied, just as you did on the night of Menna’s funeral. I was in our yard when I saw Father Ellis’s car go past slowly. I followed on foot. I saw him enter the old rectory with the medical bag he carries for such occasions. It was towards evening. I saw Menna dressed in white. I saw Father Ellis. I did not see Jeffery.’

Something had snapped. Something had fallen into place. Perhaps something which, even to a local person, was no longer defensible.

Merrily said cautiously, ‘And did what happened bear comparison with what took place at the village hall yesterday?’

‘I don’t know,’ Judith said. ‘It was not possible to see what was happening below the level of the window.’

Merrily’s palms were damp. ‘You’re saying she was on the floor at some point?’

‘I’m saying she wasn’t visible.’

‘When was this?’

‘About three... four... weeks ago? I can’t remember exactly.’

‘Not that long before she had her stroke, then.’

‘I’m making no connection, Mrs Watkins.’

‘Do you believe she was possessed and needed exorcism?’

‘I think she needed help.’

‘Was Dr Coll there?’

‘I have no reason to think so.’

‘So just Ellis and Menna.’

‘I imagine Jeffery was somewhere in the house. His car was there anyway.’

‘But you didn’t see him in the room?’

‘No. What do you want, Mrs Watkins? How can you knowing any of this possibly help Menna now?’

‘She haunted Barbara,’ Merrily said.

‘Haunted?’

‘I’m using the word loosely. Like memories haunt, guilt haunts.’

‘Yes, we know all about that.’

‘And spirits haunt.’

‘Do they really?’ Judith said. ‘Do you seriously believe that?’

‘Wouldn’t be much good in this job if I didn’t.’ What did Judith herself believe? That Ellis was an effective psychologist or an effective and useful con man?

Merrily said, ‘Barbara wanted me to do a kind of exorcism in reverse, to free Menna’s spirit from Weal’s possession. Possession of the dead by the living.’

‘Do you seriously believe—?’

‘She believed. And I believe we may have a tormented and frantic... essence which can’t find peace. Like a moth in a jar, except—’

‘A moth in a jar doesn’t live long.’

‘Exactly. That’s the difference.’

‘And how would you deal with this, Mrs Watkins?’ Judith placed her hands on her narrow hips. ‘How would you deal with it now? How would you go about it? Explain to me.’

‘Well, it wouldn’t be an exorcism, because this is not an evil spirit. If we think of her perhaps as still a victim, needing to be rescued. Which is normally done by celebrating a Requiem Eucharist in the appropriate place, in the company of people close to the dead person. In this case it could be you. And Mr Weal, obviously.’

‘Then it will never be done, will it?’

Merrily heard Eileen Cullen, with the echoes of hospital clatter. Swear to God he knew it was there. Twice, he looked back over his shoulder.

‘He won’t let her go.’ She sank into the chair, clutching the bundled coat to her chest. ‘That’s what this is about: possessing her in death as he never fully did in life. And knowing that... how can I let it go on?’

‘Suppose...’ Judith’s voice had risen in pitch. ‘Suppose I could get you into that house, into that room – or into the tomb – to perform your ceremony? You wouldn’t be doing it with his compliance, but you wouldn’t be doing it against his will either, since he wouldn’t know about it. Wouldn’t that be better than nothing from your point of view, Mrs Watkins?’

‘How could you fix that?’

‘I have keys, see – keys to the house and also to the tomb. Menna was often taken unwell, so Jeffery gave me a key to get in and attend to her. When she died, he needed someone to let the masons in, to work on the tomb.’

‘Why would you want to risk letting me in?’

‘Perhaps,’ Judith said, ‘it’s a question of what is right – the right thing to do. I cared for Menna when she was alive. Perhaps it’s the last thing I can do for her.’

‘But it’s not right for me to go into someone’s house without permission.’

‘Well...’ Judith shrugged. ‘That’s your decision, isn’t it?’ She bent over and released a valve on the iron stove; there was a rush of air and a slow-building roar of fire. ‘I was about to say, Mrs Watkins, that Jeffery won’t be there tonight. It’s his lodge night. He never misses it, unlike Councillor Prosser. It’ll be even more important to him now. Always a great comfort to a man, the Masons.’

Merrily said, ‘Perhaps it’s a job for Father Ellis instead.’

Judith looked at her with severity. ‘Does that mean you are afraid, Mrs Watkins?’